When crossing the nearly 200-metre Kamuzu Bridge in Chikwawa, one sees millions of litres of water flowing all the time down to Zambezi and finally feed into the Indian Ocean.
\nSomewhere water from the Shire River is pumped into an expanse of sugarcane fields belonging to Illovo, a sugar manufacturer. One of the fields is close to Lengwe National Park, woodland that generally looks less green in the simmering heat of the Shire Valley.
\nThe park and the sugarcane fields meet at Paramount Chief Lundu\u2019s headquarters. The abrupt change from green carpet of cane fields into dry and unappealing surrounding communities is a constant reminder that not everyone in the Shire Valley benefits from the water of Malawi\u2019s biggest river.
\nJust about seven kilometres after an outlet water canal from the sugarcane plantation lies Group Village Head Billiati\u2019s villages with roughly 700 families. One of the biggest challenges facing these people is access to water for farming.
\n\u201cThe rivers that pass through Billiati are not perennial; as such, the streams dry up completely during the summer. During this time, the community resorts to digging shallow wells one to 2.5 metres from which they irrigate their gardens using treadle pumps provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development,\u201d reads a feasibility study by Sustainable Development Initiative (SDI).
\nVillage Head (VH) Chagwa says her subjects work hard in the fields \u201cbut we usually receive less than needed rains that start and end before our crops mature\u201d.
\nShe says this pains her and her subjects a lot.
\n\u201cI feel sorry seeing hard-working mothers harvest less and end up begging or doing piecework to buy food. Imagine, even crops such as sorghum and millet that tend to do well in dry areas fail to grow properly here.\u201d
\nThe SDI report established that there are no rivers or canal within a 10-kilometre radius.
\n\u201cSo, people in this area know the value of a drop of water,\u201d adds Maynard Nyirenda, SDI Executive Director.
\nNyirenda and his team got financial backing from IM Swedish Development Partner, a Swedish non-governmental organisation to fund an irrigation undertaking that has promised constant flow of water for crops and people in the area.
\n\u201cI am fascinated and encouraged by the zeal from these people. They have dedicated their efforts on the project. Some of them have prior knowledge of irrigation as they previously worked in sugarcane fields of Illovo Sugar Limited,\u201d he adds.
\nNamed Mtendere Irrigation Scheme, the initiative has brought unfathomable excitement among the community members such as Ida Charles, a young mother of five children.
\n\u201cThe first time I saw a drop of water coming out of the pipes into the canal, my heart pounded, I thought I was dreaming. I am really excited that I will now be able to grow various crops outside the rainy season,\u201d she explains.
\nOn average, she indicates that she manages to harvest three 50-kilogramme bags of maize every year just enough to last a few months.
\nLloyd Divason, the scheme\u2019s leader from the village adds: \u201cAlmost anyone can\u2019t believe that this project is for real. As you can see, this area is dry but with the irrigation coming, we will grow tomatoes, vegetables, maize and many more crops and stop being perennial beggars of food assistance.\u201d
\nA 2,400-watt solar-powered energy station is already running as the people are constructing the canals; some offer their ox-carts to carry supplies such as sand and bricks. Some men and women carry them on their heads. They have already seen the future as two water tanks each carrying 5,000 litres stand tall ready to quench the dry land\u2019s thirst.
\n\u201cWhen I saw the first drop of water come out of the pipe, I breathed a sigh of relief and said this is the water we have always waited for. Our land will be ever green; my subjects will grow enough food to last the year. We will no longer rely on the erratic rains,\u201d VH Chagwa says.
\nShe further links the benefits to education.
\n\u201cOur children will no longer miss school days by spending hours on a treadle pump just to draw groundwater to irrigate a handful of crops,\u201d she says.
\nWorse still, the treadle pumps were not pumping water from the river but from underground.
\n\u201cThis is your project; the solar station and any equipment here belong to you people in this area. Please take care of it and jealously guard against vandalism. Every drop of water from the system has a value and please make use of its value,\u201d explains Steve Tahuna, Country Director for IM Swedish Development Partner, the initiative\u2019s financier<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When crossing the nearly 200-metre Kamuzu Bridge in Chikwawa, one sees millions of litres of water flowing all the time down to Zambezi and finally feed into the Indian Ocean. Somewhere water from the Shire River is pumped into an expanse of sugarcane fields belonging to Illovo, a sugar manufacturer. One of the fields is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58861,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58859\/revisions\/58861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}