Disaster Relief: Providing hope for the future
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© UNICEF Swaziland 2007 ESkorochod |
Mvuma, August 2007 - “We don’t know what we will do for our future,” said Elizabeth Mavuso. “Everything we plant just dies and these people who are giving us help will not give to us forever.”
Elizabeth sits outside a crumbled hut, shielding her eyes from the blowing dust. She thinks she is about 80 years old. She doesn’t know her exact age and now may never know as her “documents” burned in one of the forest fires that swept through her community.
The Dlaminis are neighbours to Elizabeth. They also suffered extensive damage in the fires. The Dlaminis live in Mvuma, in northern Hhohho. Jerome Dlamini is the patriarch of the family. He is away visiting the Chief to ask for assistance in rebuilding a house for the other 11 members of his family, mostly his grandchildren who have been orphaned or abandoned by their parents. Currently, the Dlaminis sleep in a temporary tent shelter provided by the Red Cross.
Elizabeth is visiting the Dlamini homestead and speaking with Sandile, the 14-year-old grandson of Jerome. Both of Sandile’s parents died (most likely from HIV/AIDS) and he came to live with his grandparents a few years ago. Sandile and his half-sisters, who are 15 and 16 years old, spend their days doing odd jobs for neighbours in the hopes of being paid with food.
The Dlaminis survival depends on this assistance. No one on the homestead is working. They have no maize stored for the winter. The family had no money to have their fields ploughed early in the season. By the time they had saved enough to plough, the country’s drought had taken hold and nothing they planted was worthy of harvest.
Swaziland is in the grips of the worst drought in 15 years. All regions, even the highveld areas where Elizabeth and Sandile live, have been affected. The highveld is typically considered the breadbasket of the country. A lack of rainfall and high temperatures at critical crop development time decimated the maize. The result was a 61% decrease in the maize harvest from previous years. Now, more than 400,000 people require food aid in a country with a population of just more than 1 million.
Adding to the devastation from the drought, forest fires swept through three of the country’s four regions, leaving more than 1,000 people, including Elizabeth and the Dlaminis, without shelter. Government declared both the drought and the fires national disasters.
To provide some immediate relief, UNICEF in collaboration with Government, donated 150 survival kits to families hardest hit by the fires. Red Cross distributed the kits.
“We received a package with clothing, blankets, buckets, food, cooking utensils and more,” said Elizabeth. “As the fire took everything we had, the package was very useful and we are thankful. Now we can use the buckets to fetch water for ourselves.”
Elizabeth and Sandile walk more than an hour to fetch water each day.
“Each time we get to the spring, the hole we dug last time has closed up,” said Elizabeth. “We must dig a new hole hoping water will come up.”
Elizabeth’s greatest wish is for water to be more accessible. She knows it would help her and her neighbours start a backyard garden so they could feed themselves. She hopes that with sufficient water, they could break their cycle of hunger and poverty.
One of UNICEF’s priority areas in the response to the drought is water, sanitation and hygiene. The 2007 Vulnerability Assessment Committee results showed that 64% of rural households do not have access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. With Government, UNICEF is supporting the provision of water and sanitation facilities for the most vulnerable populations. This includes procurement of water containers and purification tablets. UNICEF will also work with Government to construct water wells in selected schools and communities and rehabilitate micro water schemes in selected communities.
To provide for children like Sandile and his sisters, UNICEF is also supporting and scaling up Neighbourhood Care Points (NCPs) throughout the country. These NCPs cater to orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) to provide basic services such as food, informal education and psycho social support. UNICEF currently supports more than 500 NCPs and has plans to establish and sustain 200 more to reach 10,000 OVC in drought stricken areas.
Elizabeth smiles when she hears of these interventions. She knows that she and Sandile have a future they can look forward to.
