Mbare hostels a health time bomb

crossing on various errands ranging from boarding buses to the various destinations to touting, vending and thieving is one side of Mbare.
The other side is the residential area, where the Mbare Hostels write an epitaph of a looming health time bomb. That the bomb’s time is ticking away is no question but as to when it will really explode, only fate will tell.

With about 56 000 people squeezed in a place not meant for more than 5 000 people, disaster is difficult to avert.
Poverty is life itself.
Overcrowding, rivers, rivulets and stagnant pools of raw sewage greet you outside the flats, whose walls are scarred by years of neglect and have shattered window panes.

An acrid stench wafts across room after room but strangely does not dwarf the cacophony of voices of residents that seem enmeshed in discourse about trivia and serious issues.
Residents that seem to have resigned to their fate, with much pomp, zest and funfair! No hard rules and take it easy, seems to be the moto.

From a kitchen-cum-bathroom water gushes from a broken tape spattering the floor and adjacent are communal toilets whose flushing system has not worked for years.
Green bomber flies hover and summersault from one place to another, through broken windows and past a hodgepodge of curtain-divided rooms where the toilets, the food pots and the dirty plates are their gathering ground.

The bathrooms-cum-kitchens are so crowded that women often fight over space and turns to use them. The broken sewers from floors above empty their “baggage” on floors below while in the toilets women seem to have abandoned the basics of secrecy.
They dump used sanitary pads, expecting city cleaners to collect them.

When bathing, you need to secure your soap, otherwise by the time you open your eyes it is gone.
The spectacle of people urinating in the bathrooms while others clean their utensils barely a metre away completes the day story at these dilapidated, filthy and over-crowded hostels.

At night things change. The bizarre and the unthinkable happens!
While sex is not ordinarily a spectator spot, here it is uncommon to what through a curtain, for even without interests, the groans and ranting could make you just pip. Actually it is easier to pip than not to.
Used condoms are also thrown everywhere, exposing children to health hazards. Privacy is in dearth!

At night it becomes difficult and dangerous to use the communal toilet, for they are dark. Anything can happen there, especially for women. The bucket system comes into play.
More often than not, it is unintelligible to walk close to the outer walls, for a bucket of waste can simply drench you when human waste is thrown out through the window.

What with children being raised under these conditions?
When day and night stories are combined, the full picture of Mbare Hostels raises questions about morality and accommodation. To decamp or to demolish is the question.

“Who do you think would want to live like this? Everyone aspires to live a better life but we have nowhere to go.
“I would have loved to raise my children differently, but we are stuck here,’’ Alois Chingirangira.
Mrs Chipo Chirimbayi said she was tired of hostel life.

“Since 1980 I have been on the city housing waiting list. I am yet to be served. I do not want to stay here. I want a place of my own,” she said.
Residents suggest that Local Government, Rural and Urban Development Minister Ignatius Chombo and Mayor Muchadeyi Masunda should visit the apartments and come face-to-face with the squalid conditions.

Mrs Susan Munhundarima said the Government and the city should join hands and assist the inhabitants with residential stands.
“They must come and see for themselves like you did.
“We are prepared to move if allocated residential stands elsewhere.

“We need our own ground (stands) to build. They should allocate us the stands first before they demolish these hostels,” she said.
Ms Nyarai Maulidi wants the hostels upgraded into family units because “her life is in Mbare”.
“All deals happen in Mbare.
“This is the economic nerve of Harare,” she said.

Ms Anatolia Muvuyi said the hostels should not be demolished, adding reports of demolition had caused anxiety and stress.
Mr Darlington Chigudu wants to be allocated a residential stand. He said his colleagues were of the same view.
“If I get a residential stand I will be the first one to leave this place. I have joined several housing co-operatives and lost money,” he said.

Ms Mercy Masundo and Ms Mercy Sibanda support the idea of stand allocations.
Minister Chombo has proposed that the hostels be demolished to pave way for the construction of civilised apartments while Mr Masunda wants the apartments to be reserved for bachelors and spinsters.
On the other hand the Ministry of National Housing and Social Amenities says it has no immediate plans for the Mbare hostels because of financial constraints.

Ministry secretary, Mr David Munyoro, confirms there is no money to either refurbish the apartments or build new ones under the urban renewal programme.
“We do not have a programme for the Mbare hostels at the moment,” he said.
Mr Munyoro said Government should build a set of new apartments first and move tenants from existing hostels into the new structures.

He said the old hostels would then be demolished to pave way for the construction of new ones that accommodate families.
When the real life story is told like this, sprucing up the hostels is tantamount to applying cosmetics to a frog, yet, no amount of cosmetics can beautify a frog.