Eats Shoots and Leaves: Adding Local Understanding to the Discussion of Famine Food Resources in Niger

During my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger, my colleagues and I1 were often amused by reporter's descriptions of people "eating leaves off of the trees" as indications of the dire conditions in Niger. This was amusing to us because, as well fed Americans, "leaves off of the trees" was one of our favorite Nigerien dishes and was something routinely eaten, sold and enjoyed in both urban and rural Niger regardless of the state of food security. To imply that eating leaves was a sign of a state of emergency seemed like sensationalism, if not just poor fact checking. A few years later when I began my dissertation on the traditional uses of plants in Niger, I was surprised to find some of the same ideas repeated in scientific literature. When I discussed this with my co-author, Mr. Dan Guimbo, he was surprised that something so important to Nigerien culture and nutrition could be seen as an indicator of bad times. So we began to investigate both the literature on the subject of famine foods and the local perspective of famine foods within the village Boumba, in southwest Niger. While our results of the basic Zarma concept of "famine foods" are reported elsewhere (Muller and Almedom 2008), this article looks at the differences in the types of plants reported in the famine food literature versus by the villagers themselves and the implications this can have for practitioners and aid workers especially in famine relief interventions.