Drought Pushes Families to the Edge

Mazuba Mwiinga

Euphrasia Banda sat facing me across the table at Kagoro Primary School, Katete, Eastern Province of Zambia. Her face is agile. She arrived close to an hour earlier than agreed. Seemingly she had a lot at the back of her mind to unpack. Next to her, are her three grandchildren, dressed up in school uniforms. Her two sons and three daughters migrated to urban towns recently to fend for a living, leaving her with ten grandchildren to take care of.

“They couldn’t just stay home doing nothing. Even when they were eager to do something for survival, what would that be? We have no income. This drought has pushed us to the edge of our lives. That’s the reason they decided to go and look for work in town so that they could be sending some little money to feed these children.”

Her face grimaces, as her tongue swiftly runs over her dry lips. The silence from her grandchildren is audible. Sadness is unmistakable on their faces.

For the past two months, Euphrasia and her grandchildren have been feeding on either unripe mangoes or maize brain they collect from the community hummer mill. Times they are lucky government’s food for work programme crosses their path, and they earn a gallon of maize grain. But because they don’t have money to grind the maize into mealie-meal, they decide to pound it into mealie-rice, cook, eat, drink water and go to bed. The day ends.

“I don’t know how to thank you people from Mary’s Meals. The porridge you feed these children at school is a blessing to me. I don’t mind not eating anything, but when I know that my grandchildren have something to eat, my heart rests,” she laments.

At 45, Euphrasia is a widow, living in a single roomed house in Village Bizalide, Chief Kawaza, south of Katete District.

The drought’s effects on the country’s agricultural production, haven’t spared her. All that she had planted in her field in the 2023/2024 farming season couldn’t survive the El Nino ‘venoms’. What she harvested couldn’t last a week to feed her family. Now she has new fears. The communal water pump is no longer reliable. The water table has gone deeper, rendering the bore hole inefficient. With more than seventy households in the compound, with an average of six family members each, having enough water for household usage has become another hurdle.

“We live by the Grace of God. An outbreak of water born disease can happen at any time. You can pump and pump for a very long time, before the water comes out in drops. And looking at the number of people in this compound, it’s a disaster,” she narrates.

Mangani, is her 15-year-old grandson, and in Grade 5 at Kagoro Primary School. With charming looks, he drops his eyes time to time as he speaks. But what his mouth lets out is incredible.

“There are problems at home. Serious problems. When schools are open, we are happy, because there is clean and nutritious food at school. It makes me energetic, and focused. At home we don’t eat good food. Sometimes we don’t eat at all. We just fetch mangoes and that’s all. That’s why I want to become a President of the nation when I grow up. I want to be giving free food to all the people who don’t have food,” he says, staring at me as if asking for approval. I surely nod. The tone of his voice isn’t deceptive.

This community – Bisalide village, is a typical rural residential area 30Km from Katete central business district. Relaying on the SADC weather pattern projections that predicted signs of an early rain season this year, the residents were ready to plant their crops early. However, its already mid-December, and they are yet to receive rains. The situation is instigating more worry amongst them. They can’t imagine going through the same pangs of hunger next year again.

“I am a government worker, and I can only do this little to help these people. This year alone the number of learners at this school has dramatically increased to more than a thousand from around 600 pupils because of the Mary’s Meals programme. Every morning, a group of both women and men come to my house asking for food. People are starving. Go round the homes, you will find people eating mangoes. That’s their food,” David Phiri, headteacher at Kagoro Primary School explains.

One would wish they had plenty of these mango trees. Sadly enough, mangoes are a seasonal fruit. Soon, the trees will no longer have any of the fruits to sustain their livelihoods. Two houses apart, from Euphrasia’s, a group of five women are seated biting unripe mangoes. Euphrasia tells me it’s their lunch, yet it’s a few minutes past 2 p.m. She urges me to go and talk to them. I decline.

“That’s the time we eat lunch too when we have food. We eat late in the afternoon to cover breakfast, lunch and supper,” she explains when asked why they eat lunch that late. 

Those with domesticated animals, especially cattle have their onus of prestige that comes with owning such, rapidly wanning. The animals don’t have water to quench their thirst, nor grass to graze. The herders have to drive them long distances to find ponds of water for them.

With rising temperatures being experienced in the province and most parts of the country, Euphrasia’s hopes are only in the rains. She wonders how long she will have to wait for even drops to help resuscitate her devastated vegetable garden too.

In places it has started raining, strong winds and bouts of lightening that has taken lives in some instances, have been escorting it.  But Euphrasia still regards these places as being ‘blessed’.

However, the prolonged period of high temperatures in the so far rain fed fields, have wilted the shooting maize crops, forcing government to rekindle its drought disaster declaration, saying, “the national emergency situation remains in force until the country comes out of this disaster or threatened disaster situation being experienced,” according to a statement by Minister of Information and Media, Hon Cornelius Mweetwa.

The statement further outlines immediate measures, “to avert an anticipated food crisis due to current dry spell and its looming (negative) effects on maize production.”

For Euphrasia, her cry for rain, remains a pleading prayer and only time will tell, whether or not that prayer will bear her desired out comes.