“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink”. That typifies a little Malawian rural village just after a downpour, turning everything to thick, sticky mud and standing water…but still none drinkable due to their lack of a borehole or other usable water source. Rains may even flood their existing small wells and contaminate everything with wash-off from animals and latrines. We are noticing more billboards and posters about how to stop the spread of cholera during rainy season. And that doesn’t even touch dealing with the malaria-bearing mosquitoes just waiting for hatching. Sometimes there is too much water. Other times there is not enough and in many places there is water but it is not safe to drink.
Nothing is more necessary to sustain life than water. The people of Malawi constantly deal with the realities of good water or its absence. A primary topic of discussion now is “the rainy season,” the period usually from November through January when most of the rain will fall for the entire year. Right now the garden plots are being prepared. It is a labor intensive job. We saw a picture of a plow in a school classroom but we have not seen one in our travels. The fields both large and small are tilled by hand with large hoes. It must be ready for planting when the rains begin in earnest in November.
In the lower Shire River valley, flooding seems to come every few years, washing away everything in its path. In other places, there is parched dusty land with hardly any water anywhere. Sometimes there is water but the only way to get it to the gardens is to carry it in watering cans, one at a time. With irrigation pumps they would be able to grow good vegetables twelve months a year. In other areas the open wells are all dry by now, so pumps would not help.
Malawi contains a beautiful 300 mile long lake but somehow this has yet to be tapped as a significant irrigation source. It is also true that the majority of Malawians have never laid eyes on the lake. But we hope that this bountiful resource can someday be tapped.
As we drive through the rural areas we see groups of people gathered around boreholes (deep wells with hand pumps). Women and girls gather in those groups at the boreholes, for sure the central place for local gossip and visiting. Some boreholes are built with basins where the women wash clothes. Some of them have what looks to be a bucket shape of raised concrete which has a flat top where a bucket can be placed after it is filled. Women will take the full bucket, lift it from its perch, and place it on their head to carry the water back to the house. If she is lucky she will meet a friend at the well who can help her hoist the bucket. The trek may be a few yards to two or three kilometers. Those of us who are used to going into the kitchen or bathroom and turning a tap for pure water would chafe under such work but villages that have boreholes are considered the lucky ones.
Yesterday we visited the village of Kwidzi, in the beautiful rolling hills south of Lilongwe. At the end of our presentations, the chief spoke. She told us that water was a serious problem in her village. She remarked that we could see that the children were dirty…they were. She said she wanted to show us where they went to get the small amount of water they had.
With a few children leading the way, along with the chief and some of her villagers, we walked through the village, past garden plots that had been prepared for planting, and came to a small cleft in the earth. We descended the ten feet or so to a spot where huge boulders left an opening. A small spring provided a steady trickle to a shallow pool of water. A young woman – perhaps 12-years-old – knelt down with her plastic cup and began filling a bucket with water. The pool was not deep enough to dip the water out with the bucket. From this spot water carriers have to climb up the steep bank and then take the path some 200 yards or so into the village. The main request of this chief was for a borehole well.
Six years ago when we began raising funds for boreholes they cost about US$3,000. The latest bid we have seen this year is for over $6,500. We wish we could have promised a borehole for Kwidzi village but all we could promise is that we would tell the story. This is only one of many villages that we have visited in dire need of clean potable water. Government promises for boreholes usually go to areas of political influence, not greatest need.
Then there is the unwanted water. We were in the home of one of the “evangelists,” a young man with a wife and four children who is responsible for three congregations. The home looked sturdily built of homemade bricks. They had some furniture so we did not need to sit on mats on the floor. We looked up and saw the sky through the thin thatch on the roof. The evangelist told Pastor Mbewe that they needed plastic sheeting to put on the roof under the thatch but they did not have the US$ 30 needed to buy it. The rains are starting. They will probably be soaked. Requests for iron sheets for church roofs have become more urgent. Knowledge of, or at least practice of good thatching on roofs seems to be dying out, probably because it is associated with poverty…iron sheets for a roof mean “progress.”
The need for safe water is overwhelming. We are frustrated by the failure of villagers to use the cheap and readily available Waterguard purifier or boil the water they have, but knowing at the same time this means extra expense and use of precious firewood as well as already taxed energy. What can we do to help people change behaviors? How can we help link these real live people in need with the dozens of NGO’s in the country driving around in their big SUV’s. (Not that we’re knocking the SUV’s – we wish we had one!) We try to visualize how villagers could create common garden areas around the existing boreholes to use run-off water and pumped water for relatively easy watering can style irrigation. We fret about the lack of technical and practical help given by the government to the small farmers who constitute about 85% of the population. The need to keep back the unwanted water is real. The need for any and all kinds of safer water sources is pressing and at times desperate. And somehow the people survive and some even thrive. We are amazed and inspired.
|
