Food Prices: Hunger Strikes

Farooq Naeem / AFP / Getty Images

SLIM PICKINGS Worried about tight supplies, women in Islamabad, Pakistan, scramble for rice distributed at the Bari Imam Shrine

As the sun sets over Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slum, a sweet smell wafts through a small house where Malahasen Juma is cooking dinner for her eight children: a handful of onions, chopped and tossed into a pot of steaming maize porridge and leftover vegetables. Until recently Juma would spice up suppers with beef or fish stews. But not now. "Everything is more expensive," she says. "The children need milk, but I cannot afford that. Meat is a luxury now, not a necessity. We are just living at God's mercy."

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