Faeture


By Frazer Potani, Lilongwe , Malawi

22-year-old Violet M’madi from Mangochi on the shores of Lake Malawi over 300 Km from Lilongwe had both feet.

However, she lost her left foot following a recent crocodile attack while washing kitchen utensils in Shire River ’s waters.

“We decided to amputate the foot because it was badly injured,” Mangochi District Hospital ’s Clinical Officer Coxley Sawa told The Nation.

“This is a third case here since December last year,” he added.

M’madi also sustained minor injuries on her right leg before being rushed to the hospital by Samaritans.

Some boys had to rescue her after shouting for help after realizing that a crocodile had attacked both legs.

Women and girls in Chikolongo Village , in Balaka, 200 Km away from Lilongwe also risk being attacked by wild animals as they fetch water from same nearby Shire River .

The village shares common boundary with one of Malawi ’s magnificent tourist beacons, Liwonde National Park in the southern region of the country.

“We have for over the past two years gone without borehole water since the boreholes that government drilled for us got broken and have not been rehabilitated,” said Mariamu Jafali, 48 adding, “We are surviving on water from Shire River.”

The villagers pleaded with the park officials to allow them pass through the protected area to draw water from the river.

“We are very grateful because they accepted our request because they know our problems. But there are elephants in the park and fierce crocodiles in the river, they might attack us one day. We are just lucky to be alive by today,” added Jafali.

Jafali appealed to President Bingu wa Mutharika and his government to consider providing them with piped water because water levels in the area are very low.

M’madi’ and Jafali’s cases are evidences of problems faced by women in Malawi and sub Saharan Africa while searching for water for consumption and other uses.

Collecting water is one of the arduous and time consuming daily tasks performed by women on the continent.

In this technology fast growing century one would easily think each household needs a modern source of water to provide it with safe portable water.

However, this is still a dream far away from being realized in poor developing countries like Malawi where improvements in water supply are in fact not keeping pace with population growth of about 3 percent per year.

The majority of rural people in these countries do not have water on tap hence carry the commodity in buckets on their heads.

The method still remains the most common means of transporting water.

Transporting water in these countries also remains a task mainly for women and girls and puts them at risk of injuring their health.

One of the aims of governments with donor support is improving rural and urban water supply to reduce this burden.

However, it is apparent that safe portable water provision will remain a pipe dream due to among other things, lack of adequate resources.

Water recedes as drought advances, so time and scarce energy expended in water collecting increases.

Many women in Malawi and sub Saharan Africa perhaps spend at least seven of their 16 working hours daily collecting a single load, sometimes even sacrificing hours for sleep at night waiting their turn to draw swampy and muddy water, especially when taps are dry.

Yet same activities silently lead to their injury and deformity.

This shows that women in Malawi and Africa have harder work in families than men.

In adequate technical, financial and material resources are the main causes why most African women have no choice but continue traditionally carrying water.

Efforts and desire can be there in governments to install systems which may bring water nearer homes, but even these have proven difficult and slow tasks.

For example, during the 2007/2008 Malawi National Budget, government promised to sink two boreholes in each of the country’s 193 constituencies (700 boreholes countrywide).

During the 2008/2009 National Budget however, Members of Parliament, asked government to explain what it had done with the money for the promised boreholes since no borehole was sunk in their areas.

Breakdown rate in installed water pipes is also too high.

Lack of means of transportation of water is both a cause and an effect of rural deprivation: deprivation prevents access to uplift their lives from poverty.

People living in isolated areas even tend to be the most deprived; distant from extension and health services, they hear of new development ideas last.

Carrying water on the head has some negative health effects, too, as it requires a substantial amount of energy which has to come from metabolized food.

However, the rural people especially women and girls experience shortfalls in available food.

For example, in some cultures in Malawi when sources of protein such as a chicken is slaughtered for nsima, wives and children share the head, feet and intestines with plenty soup while the rest of the bird goes into the husband’s plate.

As such women and girls’ best response to this event would be to avoid carrying out responsibilities that require much energy.

This however, is not a possible option to an African woman where household chores like collecting water are reserved for women and girls even while pregnant!

Bwaila Hospital nurse/midwife Beatrice Mkandawire in Lilongwe said women are more susceptible to diseases resulting from malnutrition, like energy-sapping anemia, which becomes very severe during pregnancy.

“Heavy workloads such as carrying water combined with energy-sapping anemia can affect the growth of the fetus leading to impairment,” she says.

Mkandawire adds that anemia also adversely affects the quality and quantity of breast milk after delivery.

According to UNICEF people (especially women and girls) in sub-Saharan Africa societies like Malawi , are spending 40 billion hours every year collecting water equal to over 19 million full-time employees hence water scarcity is affecting more women than men at all levels.

President Bingu wa Mutharika admitted that despite beating the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) water target of 74 percent by one percent, his administration has to do more to provide safe piped water to rural and urban areas.

The Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development (MOIWD) statistics back Mutharika.

The figures reveal that by 2007, Malawi had 27,000 boreholes and 8,072 shallow wells fitted with hand pumps, giving a total of 35,072 according to the Water Point mapping exercise covering countrywide.

In addition to boreholes and shallow wells, Malawi had 13,085 communal stand pipes in rural areas, fed from gravity-fed piped water schemes.

The total number of water points in rural areas at the end of 2007 was therefore, 48,157.

If equitably distributed these water points were to serve about 9.6 million (80 percent) of then 12 million plus population.

As of 2007, however, of the 35,000 hand pumps 9,781 (28 percent) were not functional while of the 13,085 stand pipes, 6,621(50 percent) were functioning respectively.

Former MOIWD Secretary, Andrina Mchiela said from these figures, Malawi ’s piped water systems were in dire and urgent need of rehabilitation.

She said although the number of functional water points is changing all the time, as some get repaired some stop to functioning.

Mchiela further disclosed that a healthy state of equilibrium between functional and non-functional water points in Malawi could be 85 to 90 percent.

Malawi’s current Government Policy which advocates Cost-Sharing arrangements between the Government (or Capital Financiers) and the beneficiary communities of water points, the normal operations and maintenance of water points is the responsibility of the beneficiary communities.

Beneficiary communities therefore, must have a committee to manage their water facility, make monetary contributions and maintain a Bank Account so that they can buy spare parts or hire a repair man when the need arises.

Yet most of them are poor as they can not afford to spend K151 ($1) let alone three meals daily.

The community is also trained on how to dismantle and re-assemble their hand pump, so that they can undertake preventative maintenance.

With this policy and arrangement the Central Government is not supposed to budget for and go out to repair broken down water points.

Government may only come in if the water point has to undergo major rehabilitation or replacement.

Further, under the Decentralization framework, the District Assemblies are directly responsible for the provision of Water and Sanitation Services in their respective Districts.

All interventions, therefore, must be channeled through the relevant District Assemblies.

Basing on the above scenario Malawi Government’s partners in water sector have argued that statistics of people accessing safe water in Malawi are not reflecting what is actually on the ground.

The MOIWD in Malawi is ranked the second priority area in the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy.

This is so due to its direct connection to agriculture also pivotal to the country’s agriculture dependent economy.

In this regard, the Mutharika administration has prioritized this sector to improve infrastructure services in the country that would eventually contribute to sustainable economic growth and development.

The MOIWD is made up of five departments: Water Resources, Water Supply Services, Sanitation and Hygiene, Irrigation and Administration, and Support.

In terms of water supply, MOIWD is expected to establish sustainable and integrated water resources development, ensure conservation and management that makes water access and use equitable to all individuals and entrepreneurs and ensure the existence of strategic and contingency water resources development and management plans that guarantee availability of water in cases of droughts, floods and population pressures.

Although the MOIWD is way ahead on MDGs on water supply, it seems such is not the case in terms of sanitation.

There is still a reasonable number of Malawians struggling to get access to clean water.

Some people are still drinking unclean water from rivers either because they find tapped water expensive or inaccessible.

Mutharika and his Cabinet assented to the National Sanitation Policy in 2008 mandating MOIWD to establish a Sanitation Directorate but it is yet to be made operational.

Without sanitation, people can not drink clean water.

Therefore, the MOIWD needs to move fast because there is a direct relationship between water and sanitation.

If not, Malawian women will continue struggling in search for water including face crocodile attacks like what happened to M’madi.