Blessed are they who hunger and thirst

Last we visited 4 rural Community Schools and spoke with community leaders regarding their situation. At Sikuzu we found empty lishete, traditional wattle and thatched granaries, empty. People are selling chickens and their own stock of dried-fish to buy mealie-meal. People were eating buhobe/inshima and wild greens once a day. Some were only eating buhobe/inshima dressed with cooking oil.

Some more drought resistant cassava cuttings from Sichili had been reintroduced and planted, but would not be ready for another year. We came across a hobbled stirk belonging to Mr Sampaya, lying on a scotch-cart, about to be taken to the butchery in Mwandi, 8 kilometres away. It had broken its leg while grazing down at the river bank and could not get up. The poor beast would be sold for a pittance to butchers from Livingstone and the proceeds used to buy mealie meal, cooking oil, salt and perhaps some soap. Sikuzu people are generally reluctant to sell their cattle as they are seen as capital.

We moved on to Aibelilwe Community School where we found the PTA in session on the holiday Monday. They welcomed us warmly and asked us to join their meeting. Many of the families from here, we heard, had moved with their cattle to the fishing camps at the river as the local water sources had dried up. No production unit was possible here without a borehole or chokochoko – hand pump. Namakau, the sister to a community matriarch in Sikuzu, movingly and in frustration told that she had ploughed and sown at the usual time after the first rains but the rains had failed and the sun had scorched the maize seedlings, so they had sown again with old seed and these too had failed. Where in a good year you could expect 6 to 10 sacks from a lima, this year they hardly got a bucket! They needed help.

Mr Ndala, one of the Committee, took us to the next school Alibuzwi at Sitali’s village where Mubita’s family comes from. According to him the last time there was a drought like this was in 1993, when our Catriona/Shamiso was born.  En route, we passed a dry and rusting chokochoko, an Indira hand- pump, drilled about 12 years ago. The spare parts still have to be imported from India. This is a good example of wasted aid. The drillers were paid to drill a certain number of 30-50m boreholes regardless of the local geology. There is an underground belt of salt which runs from Sesheke to Kasaya in our area and they drilled through it, without either stopping before they reached it or protecting the water being pumped up from below, being contaminated by it. So people here in high numbers suffer from high blood pressure, strokes and kidney disease. But, hey, chillax, it’s only a statistical cluster, and some European Development Minister could get up in their Parliament and report that so many more thousands of people now had access to drinking water because of the number of boreholes they had paid for to be drilled in Western Province, Zambia! An excellent example of the difference between the quantitative and qualitative?! But reports of which will never see the light of day.

At Alibuzwi we met Manyando, the young teacher there. He is unqualified and lives modestly in a traditional daub and wattle house..The classrooms are low, mud-walled ‘flats’ with a zinc roof. The water, both drinking and for any other purpose, is scooped out by a dish from a 4m deep hand-dug well. The mothers of the children were there at school, busy smearing mud on the walls of the classroom to prepare them, hopefully for the onslaught of the rains in December. We picked up some kids on their way to school. They were grazing on manganda, fruit from local palm trees. They had eaten nothing else today. Manyando was teaching over the holidays as he had been away on an In-Service Course for two days the week before. He told us of a number of children that had dropped out of school this term, as there is limited food at home and they only really attend school when they have the energy to do so. As the only wage earner in the community, he is able to feed some from his own resources, those children he knows who are in desperate need.

We moved on to Sooka Community School. It is closer to Mwandi and as the Headteaher said, a local lodge, as part of its community responsibility programme, goes more than the extra mile to help them out. However, the school relies on water from the lodge and would appreciate having a source of its own. Being beside the river means that fish and vegetables are more readily available and can be caught and grown. So as not to ‘flood’ the Mwandi market with fish and vegetables at the same time, a community agreement has been struck with individuals, agreeing on certain days of the week to sell their wares. The children here at Sooka Community School too are mainly from subsistence farmers and the granaries are empty here too.

On our way back to Mwandi, we passed four sites where Community-owned fish ponds are being dug to help take the pressure off the wild Zambezi fish stock.

The UCZ’s intervention is not only to introduce better policies but also to train communities in the best ways to cope with the negative effects of climate change that are already taking a toll on Zambian communities, The  UCZ is very concerned with the direction in which the world is moving especially with the continued denial by many world leaders of climate change despite evidence to the contrary However, the UCZ believes in both prayer and action. Climate change is inextricably linked with environmental justice especially in the extractive mining industry and as part of our socio-economic programme, climate change is a significant component.

It is too simplistic, as some do, to portray climate change as the fulfilment of the biblical “end times” prophecy, but nevertheless with the prolonged drought the UCZ has organised prayer meetings to address climate change and its visible impact. The Church has to be a watch-dog on behalf of the people and to understand and be involved in the climate change discourse. It is a complex and moral struggle we are engaged in. This requires us also to engage politically to try an influence policy. The Church through the CCZ, has worked with Government already regarding policy highlighting to the dangers of uranium mining

A campaign called “We have faith – act for climate justice”, collected over 200,000 signatures across Africa, demanding a “just and legally binding climate treaty” at COP 17 in South Africa, in 2011.Since then, we have used our church structures to influence change. Disaster Risk Reduction Church Committees have been trained in tree planting, good forest management practices and sustainable agriculture.

Although the Zambian Government and the UCZ share the sentiments of “polluter pays” principle, demanding a fair share of resources to cope with climate shocks, we still see it is the most vulnerable communities that bear the brunt of climate change.