It's an unusual recipe prepared by an unlikely cook in the rural depth of the Mutasa District in Zimbabwe. You don't see many men cooking here, much less cooking porridge for their children. So, how did this happen?
Samukute took up cooking when his wife Chideya invited him to a 10-day nutrition workshop. The training session was organized by FAO’s Zimbabwe Livelihoods and Food Security Programme (LFSP), implemented by a consortium of partners and funded by Department for International Development (DFID).
When asked what other men think of his active role in the domestic chores normally managed by women, Samukute shrugs off the question. “I have no problem with cooking,” he states, an obvious understatement given the enthusiastic porridge preparation demonstration he just delivered.
“Most men” he says, “have strong patriarchal attitudes. They consider themselves the head of the household, and they don't cook. Most do not even know the foods their families need and therefore do not provide the right resources to meet their nutritional needs. I see men fighting new ideas, but their attitudes only lead us to underdevelopment. Men need to work with their wives.”
In addition to coaching participants in how to create a diverse diet, the LFSP project also helped them to diversify their food sources: what they grow and how they grow it. Samukute says it is easier to produce a balanced diet when you have the ingredients on hand. ''We grow most of the food that we eat here,'' he explains.
Despite being an area rich in agriculture, even in years when rains are good and harvests come in well, the average rate of stunting (slower than usual growth) of children under five years in the Mutasa district where Samukute lives was 31.5 percent in 2018. However, this has decreased significantly as, in 2010, the prevalence of stunting was as high as 47.2 percent. Chronic malnutrition and stunting remain a major challenge in Zimbabwe where the national rate of stunting for children under five was 26.2 percent as of 2018.
Samukute says he can now see that his boys were malnourished. “They could not even run. They would just collapse,” he recalls. They had food, he explains, but they did not have a balanced diet. “They told us it is hidden hunger. We eat but we lack many nutrients needed for the body to grow well.”