It is mid-1991 in Togo, and Nicole Menage '77 realizes that she has a problem on her hands. For four and a half years, she has worked for the United Nations World Food Program, trying to feed the hungry, develop the infrastructure, and protect the forest in the West African nation.
Suddenly she can't do her job anymore.
“It's hard to implement your projects when there are riots going on and tires burning everywhere,” Menage says,
recalling the political upheaval that forced her to abandon her efforts and move to her next posting on the African continent.
Such is the life of a career United Nations development worker, who has dedicated most of the last two decades to making life a little easier in some of the harshest places in the world. If there isn't a drought-induced famine on the horizon, then there is the ever-present threat of civil war. Still, people need to be fed, roads need to be built, forests need to be protected, and Menage does her part to see that these things get done.
Menage lives in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she has directed the World Food Program for Southern Africa for the past three and a half years. She collects and distributes about eleven million tons of food every year, and the work takes her from South Africa to Mozambique, Malawi, Burundi, Rwanda, and Angola, among other nations.
In 1992 and 1993, she helped feed hundreds of thousands of Africans suffering under a seemingly interminable drought. In 1994, she helped get food to the Rwandan refugees fleeing a brutal civil war. And in 1995, food had to be distributed to the newly repatriated Mozambique refugees.
Menage says she has a special appreciation for the experience of dealing with the'92'93 famine because she could help without having to be in the middle of the emergency.
“Zimbabwe and South Africa really are quite developed,” she explained from her home in Harare this March. “So that makes things a lot easier. There is a lot of energy and dynamics here, especially in Zimbabwe, where there really is a great potential for growth.”
Unfortunately, Menage says, the same cannot be said for several other countries on the African continent, where poverty is rampant.
“It's sad because much of the poverty you see here is mainly caused by civil wars,” she said. “The wars in some cases have been going on for so long that it's impossible for these places to get out of an emergency situation. So the agriculture stays at a subsistence level.” Still, Menage is quick to point out that the poverty she sees is less harsh than the urban poverty
that millions endure in America's cities.
Menage, a native of Kew Gardens in Queens, N.Y., always dreamed of working in the international community, so a posting with the United Nations was a natural fit. She remembers being captivated by Morocco as a teenager travelling with her family, and she scouring university libraries in the Capital District for books on Africa when she was a Union student. She earned a master's degree in international affairs from George Washington University.
Menage became a volunteer in the U.N.'s Capital Development Fund and headed to Burundi to work on improving roads. When that volunteer program ended, Menage took a posting with the World Food Program in Malawi. Except for a stint at the program's Rome headquarters in 1986, she has been in Africa ever since.
Menage misses her friends back home and regrets never having had what she calls “a regular sort of life in the States,” where she might not have to worry about procuring another 50,000 tons of grain from South Africa. “I'm fearful I won't get the chance for something like that until early retirement,” she adds with a laugh.
For now, Menage, her husband, and her two young children, Luca, four, and Chiara, six, expect to remain in Zimbabwe until at least 1997. Then, there might be a temporary transfer to Rome, and then they likely will return to Africa for yet another posting.
After all, she points out, there are always more hungry mouths to feed.