Issa Ebombolo did not expect the level of malnutrition he encountered among people displaced by Cyclone Idai. Upon arriving in Malawi — where he helped distribute a Mennonite Central Committee shipment of food and relief supplies to survivors of the tropical storm, which made landfall March 15 — he was taken aback by the dire need for food aid.
CHICAGO — Corniki Bornds sits on the sofa in her living room, where reminders of her son, her only child, adorn the walls and shelves. Just around the corner is his room, a place she couldn’t enter for six months after he went to play basketball with his friends and never came home.
When no volunteers stepped up to coordinate making fritters for the West Coast Mennonite Relief Sale and Auction April 12-13 at Fresno (Calif.) Pacific University, attendees got a lesson in supply and demand.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — On my first visit to Ramon St. Hilaire’s workshop, in a narrow alley in Port-au-Prince, I remember it smelled of fragrant, fresh-cut wood. Sawdust sparkled in the tropical air. Outside, stacks of wood from the obeche tree cured in the sun, waiting to be shaped into elegant bowls. During this visit, St. Hilaire showed me a newly sanded platter. I took it and turned it over in my hands, feeling something familiar in the smoothness of its form.
