Waiting for the rain . . .

rain.
Cattle and goats gambol on tree leaves as there is no single tuft of grass standing. Not even a strand!
In the art of adaptation, the livestock seem to have developed prehensile tongues to enable to pick leaf after leaf from tree branches. The bottom branches of the trees now have a common graze-line that looks like a schoolboy’s fresh English haircut.
The area is born dry. The sun mercilessly sucks moisture from mother earth, day after day. The sky is cruel, unforgiving and cloudless. Rivers that form an intricate Zambezi River-bound network have shrivelled to a shadow of their wet season selves.
Only hued sands snake down with the channel as stark reminders of the rivers that used to flow, once upon a time.
In the wilderness, the teeming wildlife has not been spared, either. Wild animals from gnu, kudu up to impalas and elephants trickle to the rivers for a sip of the life-serving liquid — water!
Thanks to elephants and baboons who have mastered the art of digging for water in the sand. Call it sand abstraction. Lions and other predators stalk their prey.
Villages dotted on Kalahari sands, each standing close to one or two bulbous baobab trees, the trademark for the much-needed shed and fruit, tell a story of prolonged droughts.
Upper and lower Dobola, Siansundu and some parts of Tsholotsho deep inside Matabeleland North face serious water problems.
This is forcing villagers to walk long distances and digging up riverbed wells in search of the precious liquid. Many a time, they share the river bed water with their livestock.
While the Government did well to drill boreholes spanning from soon after independence up to about the time the country was placed under illegal sanctions, there is certainly need for a new regime of boreholes as those ones have become obsolete.
Year after year, they plant crops and year after year, they watch their crops suffer from moisture stress before eventually succumbing to drought.
In the blistering heat, women and children bear the brunt, taking long walks in search of water, the well-to-do use donkey-drawn carts to the distant watering holes.
Despite the fact the province has one of the largest water sources in Zimbabwe, the mighty Zambezi River, where a hive of activity take place around its banks, the water crisis has haunted the villager for too long.
Matabeleland North is one of the richest provinces in terms of mineral wealth and it’s high time the plethora of mining companies embark on community water supply schemes as part of the corporate social responsibility programmes.
The Government, which has a lot on its hands, cannot be expected to do everything when there are big companies who should pay back to the communities through water supply projects and irrigation schemes.
Matabeleland North continues to face challenges in meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals such as provision of safe drinking water.
Lack of water sources has had a negative impact on the lives of women and children as they have to walk for long distances to fetch the water.
“We wake up every morning around 3am with my two daughters to go and fetch water at a borehole which is 5km away. Normally we come back after three hours and the girls have to prepare to go to school,” said Mrs Anita Ndlovu.
Some villagers in Dobola communal lands said the water problems bedevilling the area were caused by the non-availability of boreholes. This compels villagers to travel long distances in search of water.
“We have serious water problems here and we have no choice but to go to sources where there is safe water. We have approached responsible authorities since 2005 and they are yet to respond,” said Mr Leonard Munkuli, one of the villagers in Dobola.
Hwange district is also facing similar problems.
“My boys drive the cattle every two days to Kalope Dam so that the cattle drink water since there is no other source of water around,’’ says Mr Norbert Change from Dinde village in Hwange.
The irrigation scheme serving the community has also been affected by the water shortage as the farmers fail to get more yields due to the limited water. They are now doing water rationing.
The situation is worse in Tsholotsho district where most families rely on water drawn from riverbeds for domestic use and livestock.
“Tsholotsho is among parts of Matabeleland North that suffer chronic water shortages. Villagers always rely on the shallow wells dug along the river beds especially this time of the year when water starts diminishing from the dams and rivers as a result of evaporation,” said the district authorities.
While much has been done to ameliorate water supply in urban Hwange, little has been done to increase access to safe water for rural communities.
In its 2010 report on Water and Sanitation in Southern Africa, the United Nations Development Programme said only two in every five people in the Southern African Development Community has access to safe water for drinking and household use. Seventy-five percent of those lacking access live in rural areas and the majority of these are women and children.
Binga District Administrator Mr Juma Dube said the provision of safe water was one of the priority areas for the Government.
He said although the Government was facing challenges, it had now partnered with some non-governmental organisations and there has been an improvement in the provision of water in some communities in Binga.
“Provision of safe water is a great challenge for us. However, we have been working with certain NGOs which are involved in water and sanitation programmes. Some borehole drilling projects are in progress as we speak,” said Mr Dube.
Practical Action in its 2009 reports says more than 40 percent of the population in Matabeleland without access to safe water is made up of women and children. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, 1,6 million children die every year from diarrhoea that could be prevented with clean water.
Diarrhoea is mainly responsible for the burden caused by water-borne and water washed diseases.
Health officials in Matabeleland North said improving access to safe water supply is a preventive intervention.
They added that improving access to safe water and basic sanitation services can be the best preventive intervention strategy to reduce diarrhoea.
According to a 2010 United Nations Environment Programme report, only 26 out of 53 countries in Africa are likely to reach the MDGs target for drinking safe water.
The MDGs calls on governments to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.