When Kent Alexander joined CARE as GC, he didn't bargain for how the organisation's work would change his perspective

Driving for five hours through the sand-swept, arid Sahel region from Niger's capital Niamey to the town of Konni, I listened to an audiobook version of The Hunger Games. The novel opens with a scene of bleak poverty in a post-apocalyptic town called District 12. Dirt, grime, threadbare clothing, scarce food.

Looking out the window at the mud and thatch structures and the gaunt, colourfully dressed women floating by my window, I couldn't help but think Niger was District 12 on steroids. Here, people are experiencing 'the hungry season', and it is certainly neither a novel nor a movie. It's very real.

niger-2Still, I couldn't help but smile about the difference people here are making in partnership with CARE. Having joined CARE as general counsel just last April, this was my first trip to a region deep in the throes of crisis. This was poverty as I'd never seen it.

The facts? Niger ranks 186th out of 187 countries on the United Nations' (UN's) Human Development Index, putting it in a dead heat with the Democratic Republic of Congo as the least developed country on earth. Most adults over 25 have precious little formal education, and an overwhelming majority are illiterate. Particularly hard hit are Niger's women and children, always the most vulnerable to poverty. Conflicts simmer on three bordering countries and, among many other challenges facing Niger, a catastrophic drought is underway.

According to a recent report, over 10 million of Niger's 16 million citizens will run out of food stocks well before the next harvest, expected around October. All families have cut back on their food consumption. Most who I met are down to one meal a day. The country is on the proverbial brink. Without help, many will suffer irreparable physical harm; many will lose their lives.

The villages we visited in western Niger are mind-bogglingly poor. When we arrived at Ayyawane, hundreds of people gathered for a welcoming ceremony. During the programme, young children presented formal requests in envelopes to the group of visitors from CARE. Their number one request? Not toys, not new clothes and certainly not a trip to Disney World. Drinking water. Water! This was especially striking because Ayyawane is by far the most affluent of the villages we visited.

We toured Ayyawane and spoke with the mayor and other people about their lives and their very modest dreams. Then, at the end of our visit, I saw something that gave me a small but jolting idea of what poverty is like.

As we headed to the car for our departure, dozens of young children crowded behind the Toyota and were uncharacteristically pushing and shoving each other. The tailgate was open and the driver stood beside our cooler containing a few leftover cold drinks from lunch earlier in the day. Philippe Leveque, the national director of CARE France, said: "Kent, this is the face of poverty."

Frankly, I thought he was overreacting a bit and said as much. After all, the day was broiling – almost 40 degrees Celsius. Of course the kids were elbowing in for a shot at a cold drink. Then I took a closer look.

The cooler was shut tight, and the driver was not handing out drinks at all. He was handing out a few of our empty cans and plastic bottles. The cans were fodder for tin toy planes and cars to use or sell. The bottles would be used as receptacles for months down the road when the rains finally come. The throng of children only dispersed after a man swatted at them with a stick. Our trash was their treasure.

So the uplifting parts of the visits? There were certainly many. While in Ayyawane, we visited a garden made possible by five wells that CARE had dug through the years. Outside the garden stood a huge grove of trees,  greenery rarely seen in most of Niger. The mayor told us they planted all those trees with support from CARE more than 30 years ago, when he was just 11. The grove now serves as a ready source of wood for energy and construction, which villagers maintain, planting new trees as they log.

In another village, Bangoukoirey, I saw one of CARE's savings and loan groups in action. Each of the three dozen or so women members stepped forward to contribute their week's savings of CFA500 (60p) or less into a pooled fund, which they could later use to make and collect small development loans. The president of the group, colourfully dressed in a green, black and blue striped robe with a purple scarf, told me she had been saving for six years. During that time she had used the loans to buy poultry, two oxen and a cart, and had repaid all the money with interest.

But life was still hard. With the drought underway there is no longer money for the future, and not enough for food and water now.

niger-4Back on the road, in the village of Maijanjare, we went to a rock-hard, barren field with hundreds of three metre wide half-moon craters that stretched as far as the eye could see. It reminded me of a TV special featuring landscapes pocked with mysterious patterns allegedly left by some ancient culture or extraterrestrials. But in this case there was no mystery.

CARE's project manager Nouroudine Pereira told us that the villagers, ingeniously, dug the craters on a gently sloping plain so that when the rains finally do come, the water will not simply wash over the baked terracotta landscape and flood the southern most point. Each crescent captures the rainwater and becomes a garden, and the villagers harvest millet and other crops to sell and store for the next hungry season. But they cannot do this without money to buy tools and without food to sustain them. And, unfortunately, food prices have soared since last autumn. Enter CARE.

Pereira explained the details of CARE's 'cash-for-work' programme and, after showing us the field, brought us over to the line of villagers collecting their payments. CARE pays each villager a very modest sum to dig two craters per day into the concrete-like soil and provides the tools.

This injects money into the economy, which people can use as they see fit. A 36-year-old mother standing in line spoke of how critical the payments are to support her and her four children. Her husband is living in the somewhat more prosperous Nigeria (though still a lowly 156 out of 187 countries on UN's Human Development Index), scavenging for work to send remittances home, although finding work is never guaranteed. On the other hand, the lack of food and water in Niger is very real.

On the long drive back to the capital city of Niamey, I listened to the rest of The Hunger Games and watched more villages roll by. My mind wandered to the real-life hungry season and the onset of a food crisis in Niger. Suzanne Collins' book, compelling to most, seemed almost trite as I thought – and continue to think – about how to make the crisis in the Sahel compelling to all those who will never see it firsthand. How can we avoid a severe crisis like what we are now seeing in the Horn of Africa? How can we preserve the development progress made to date through the efforts of CARE, other non-governmental organisations, the UN, the government and the people?

How can we help the adults and children of the Sahel, with such strong spirits and determination, avoid going beyond the tipping point, when no amount of aid can bring them back?

Kent Alexander is general counsel for CARE. For more information or to donate to the West Africa food crisis visit www.careinternational.org.uk