The flashes of cameras momentarily blind Veronica Chambwera and her one-day-old baby, who is squirming in the suffocating heat.
BY PHYLLIS MBANJE
She plasters a smile that does not reach her eyes, as the visitors flood the tattered tent that serves as a temporary ward at Chingwizi Clinic in Nuanetsi Ranch.
Veronica is one of the many flood victims, who have been moved from the initial transit camp to the small plots a few kilometres away.
Like many women, this is the first baby she has given birth to in “exile”, far away from the familiar sights of a proper hospital. She bravely and cordially accepts the numerous congratulatory handshakes that are proffered by the visitors that include Japanese ambassador to Zimbabwe Yoshi Tendai Hiraishi, United Nations International Children’s Fund (Unicef) representative, Jane Muita and several other partners touring the area.
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But her eyes mirror the sadness and shame that she feels at being in such a state. The tent that houses her and her baby along with other women is torn, dusty and offers little reprieve from the unrelenting heat.
“This place is hot and the mosquitos are terrible. I cannot cover up the baby as is expected of an infant because he cries often when he is too hot,” she said.
She frantically tries to keep her worn skirt in place with one hand while the other supports her baby who is suckling away noisily, oblivious of all the attention around him.
Mwenezi is arid and mosquito-infested, making human habitation extremely hard, particularly for young children.
But thousands of families have been forced to call it their home after nature went fickle and swept away their homes in floods in 2014.
This had been a result of excessive rains, which caused a rapid rise in the Tokwe-Mukosi Dam, which was and still is under construction since 1998.
The flood crisis forced over 2 400 households to be evacuated from the area.
The evacuated families were moved to a transit camp in Chingwizi. The real nightmare then started.
There was that initial freeze when no one was doing anything, the government nor development partners.
“We were just dumped with a few of our belongings. We had no food, no blankets, no sanitary wear and no shelter,” recalls Chembwera, who has two other children.
With time, as the critical situation became more apparent, a number of humanitarian organisations like the International Organisation for Migration, United Nations agencies and the government started providing the affected households with food, shelter, emergency health services, household profiling/registration as well as camp co-ordination and camp management services.
“It has not been easy for us pregnant women. We face a lot of challenges here. The clinic is substandard and even though a new one is almost complete we have endured a lot,” 22-year-old Merjury Rucheche said.
She has three little ones and another on the way. She and other pregnant women are staying at a makeshift mothers waiting home at the clinic.
The pole and dagga hut has two squalid rooms with little light and ventilation. It houses eight women, but ideally only four women would be comfortable.
“We have little resources and our food portions which we source on our own are limited,” Ngoni Mutatiwa, who is 25 and has three children as well, said.
Both these young women started their families barely out of their teens, lack of education and means to survive forced them to settle for marriage early.
“Mosquitoes give us grief and the heat makes it worse. So we sleep outside instead. It is much better and cooler, but the pesky mosquitoes keep us awake,” Rucheche said.
The women have to deal with water shortages at the clinic and since the only borehole dried up they have struggled to get to another source.
“It is not very far, but when you are this heavy, it is quite a task that we all dread,” Mutatiwa said.
All these women are cognisant of the impending drought and nursing babies means they will not participate much in fending for their families.
Unicef representative, Muita said women and children continued to be their area of concern.
“Children bear the brunt of natural disasters such as floods. In cases where children and their families are already vulnerable, the impact of these events is more severe,” she said.