Looting food which has been donated

The looting of donated food is a dreadful thing.  The injustices of the world is crazy.
Food was donated a few years ago to Mozambique.  I was living there at the time.
It was a strange time, there was flooding and travel was impossible to get anywhere, the water covered everything.

We had to get our food from different sources, we were lucky enough to have friends who could send us food parcels via South Africa, but they had to fly it in to us.  We lived in the Inhambane province at that stage. Road travel was limited to the central part of town, We were cut off from from the other towns.

The sad part is that the local Mozambican at that stage, were sustenance farmers,  they live off their produce and if they have more than they can use, they trade amongst themselves or sell it at the local markets.

Well, the floods happened, homes were lost, people were dying and help was pouring in from the NGO's  and other Organizations.

From rubber ducks with outboard motors, to help with rescue's.  Food was sent in by the bags full.  At a time like this rice and mielie meal is distributed to the locals and all who need, this is a gift for the people.

However a time like this power is a dreadful thing.  Whenever the power hungry person steps up, there is a money driven opportunity for them to make money.  Well make money they did.  They sold the free rice to people who had nothing, nowhere to live, just nothing.

The saddest thing I had ever seen was a old lady who had walked for miles to get to the distribution point with her bowls to take back food to where she came from.   She had walked for miles in water to get to the town, where it was being distributed.

This "Director" as they like to be called would not give her the food as she did not have the monies to pay for the rice and mielie meal, he sent her away, not bothered.  I was nearby and saw what had happened and had to ask someone else to go and "buy" and give it to her.  It was dreadful.  That was not the only one that I saw that he turned away that day.  But the stories came out.  He was never taken to task about it.

What we heard is that there were warehouses in Maputo that had such a lot of donations in the warehouse that was never distributed to the needy, but instead was sold to the people who were in charge of making sure it was distributed.

Nothing was proven of course, this is Africa, but is it not sad, that one person's downfall is another man's ill gotten gain.