From WBEZ Chicago, this is American Life.
Okay, let's see what we got in here.
How are you?
Good.
This is huge.
We're in a warehouse in Rhode Island whose floor space is bigger than two full football fields.
Three stories tall.
Row after row after row of cardboard boxes stacked high, stretching far into the distance.
I feel like the only thing that I know to compare this to is,
like, the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
That's a pretty good comparison.
Most of these cardboard boxes contain this nutritional peanut paste.
It's kind of miracle food made to strict international standards,
officially called RUTF, Ready to Use Therapeutic Food, or Plumpy Nut.
Each box has two months' worth, enough to save the life of one severely malnourished child.
Over 200,000 boxes that are sitting here in this warehouse.
Each one represents one child's life.
Navin Salem runs this place, making this stuff, and Sarah Rumsey is one of her managers.
They explain that we're looking at millions of dollars of aid that's already been paid for by the United States government.
They manufactured it for the U.S.