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No Anesthesia. The children at Umuaka are sad, misshapen creatures, their legs dangling like loose strings, their bellies bloated by malnutrition, their skin bleached by sores, their eyes wide and pleading. Some are too weak to walk and have to be dragged along by friends. Out in the lush countryside, in some of the mud-walled villages, the crisis is worse. When one of the Catholic priests visits he is immediately surrounded by haggard faces begging for medicine, food, anything. At the Seventh-day Adventist Hospital in Okpala, a sign at the gate reads "No Vacancy." At Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Umuahia, the largest in the region, doctors one day recently counted 1,800 patients suffering from kwashiorkor: during the whole of 1963, the same hospital treated 18 such cases. At the military hospital in the same city, Major David Ofomata, chief medical adviser, tells visitors that everything from antibiotics to catgut is needed, and explains that surgeons have to operate without being able to anesthetize their patients.
Prices in Biafra have skyrocketed. A chicken that cost 70¢ before the war now brings $5.50. The government and the missionaries are advising the people to eat rats, dogs, lizards, even white ants to get some protein into their systems. Gasoline is rationed and electricity is in short supply.
Kerosene-Lit Airstrip. Relief officials estimate that Biafra needs daily food imports of at least 200 tons, a target that a fly-by-night air lift of chartered old Constellations has not been able to meet. A bare trickle of supplies has been flown in, some by the Vatican. The flight into Biafra is a dangerous trip through radar-guided Nigerian antiaircraft fire to a secret, kerosene-lit airstrip that one pilot describes as "little wider than a bicycle path." A medicine-laden aircraft crashed last month, killing its American pilot and two other Americans.
Yet despite the perilous squeeze, despite the widespread fear that if Nigeria takes over all Biafrans will be killed, Ojukwu's people have somehow managed to retain surprising morale. Visitors receive friendly greetings in the street and hear the plea "Help us win the war." In the villages, shouts of "Nno!" (Welcome) are accompanied by the traditional offer of a cup of palm wine, still in plentiful supply. With that, the host will usually break open a kola nut—a mild stimulant that helps stifle hunger.