Stephen Kapambwe
13 May 2003
IN the last few days, news has been trickling in about the tragic occurrence of floods in Barotse Plain in Western Province.
Thanks to the Zambia Institute of Mass Communication (Zamcom), which organised a "floods" based workshop for photojournalists from April 28 to May 9.
About 18 media personnel recently traveled over 600km from Lusaka to Mongu by road to witness the meltdown for themselves.
Somewhere was this hope that through the eyes of those selected few that travelled, the world would learn of the great need that has arisen among the peoples of the Barotse Flood Plain.
It all began on the April 7, barely two days after Western Province celebrated Kuomboka (a Lozi term meaning getting out of the water), when the worst floods in 50 years swept through the Barotse Plain.
From the elevated position of Ngulu Hotel in the east, the plain appeared like the Zambezi River when in fact the local people said the river was 5km away, well out of sight.
Initially, the people on the plain had nothing to worry about. They assumed the rising waters were going to recede as they always did after the Kuomboka. Indeed, they counted on their experience of having lived along the plain from time immemorial.
But the water kept rising and fear soon set into the minds of most of them. In haste, the residents fled while the raging floods swept over villages, rice, sugarcane and maize fields, clinics as well as everything that was attached to the ground.
Whipped up by surprisingly strong winds, the rising floods had gone up to eight metres in many places in a short space of time.
As though that was not enough, crocodiles not known to exist in the canal waters of the Barotse Plain were soon lurking in the most unsuspecting of places and pouncing on people.
Coupled with the force of the wind that claimed lives of the fleeing villagers by causing huge waves that hit and capsised an unknown number of speed boats and small canoes, the reptiles attacked their own victims, killing them instantly and pushing the total death toll on the plains to seven.
At the palace of the Litunga - King Lubosi Imwiko II- in Limulunga, officials in the Barotse Royal Establishment were studying alarming reports about the deluge.
About 25 villages that included clinics infrastructure had been obliterated.
Construction of a road from Mongu to Kalabo had been halted and masses of fleeing villagers from 14 of the 25 villages had taken over the Litunga's summer residence at Lealui, while another substantial number had sought refuge at Limulunga.
As the elders of the Royal Establishment battled against time to devise ways of helping their people, news about the arrival of the photojournalists in Mongu reached them.
At once they sent for the visitors whom they briefed and urged to help alert the outside world about the plight of the flood victims.
At Limulunga the Ngambela (prime minister) Manyando Mukela told the visitors how the floods came.
" The floods just came too fast. We think the water came from Luambimba River in North-Western Province. But most of it must have come from Angola where it rained heavily," he said.
His assertions were not far off the mark. Information in the Longman secondary school atlas for the Southern African Development Community (SADC), indicates that a vast watershed punctuated by Big Plateau exists in Central Angola.
Numerous rivers flow out of this watershed into Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zambia as well as Namibia. For example, more than 10 rivers that feed the Congo River in DRC originate from this watershed.
These include rivers like Cachimo, Kwenge and Chicapa.
Among these rivers, Luanginga, Lutembo, Southern Lueti and Luangembu rivers from Angola's Moxico province flow directly into the Zambezi River via the Baroste Plain in Western Province.
An additional five rivers flow from the Moxico province into North-Western Province. These are Kashiji, Lumbala, Luena, Luvua and Lufige rivers all of which flow into the Zambezi.
These rivers have formed a gigantic eco-system that feeds and sustains Kashiji Plain (in North-Western Province), Liua Plain, Luena Flats, Nyengo Swamps, as well as the Barotse Flood Plain.
In addition, Angola, which is the source of all these rivers, lies in a tropical rain climate, making it ideal origin for floods.
Therefore, it is probable that Cyclone Japhet, which early this year caused great damage in Gwembe Valley after its fragments caused unusually high rainfall in southern Zambia, might have overwhelmed these rivers.
If not, the tropical rain climate could have been more intense this year than before, causing torrents of rainwater to flow down the rivers that resulted in the Zambezi bursting its banks.
Ngambela Mukela explained that while life in the plain was such that people needed the Zambezi River to overflow its banks in order to celebrate Kuomboka, this year's water was unexpected.
"The flood came a bit late this year and people thought that the situation had stabilised.
But suddenly, water came up very high, forcing people to leave their homes and move into areas that are not conventional," said the prime minister who was flanked by Netamoyo or the chief justice Manangombe Sikota and Induna Imenda Kandala Mumpeto.
The Netamoyo said that among the fatal accidents that took place between the April 7 and 10 this year was one involving a boat transporting passengers. The vessel capsised near Lealui and three people drowned.
Other fatalities involving crocodile attacks occurred in two other separate accidents, one near Lealui and another in Mongu.
"In the last few days the district disaster management team was out in the field to assess the situation.
Together we have made trips out there so that we can prescribe appropriate measures to help the affected people," the traditional chief justice said.
However, the Ngambela revealed that the elders of the Barotse Royal Establishment had more to worry about than the flooding.
"The main focus of the problem is not only now but even up to the next season. The focus is on the ability of the people to feed themselves and whatever arrangements there are, they have to be made along those lines," he said.
He explained as the people had lost their property, crops in their fields as well as their food stores, hunger was likely to trouble them more than the floods.
He gave an example of Kalabo and Sesheke where food had become scarce due to lack of water at a time when the Barotse Plain had to contend with too much water.
Earlier on, the photojournalists had found wheat laden commercial boats at Mongu harbour. Sources there said the World Food Programme (WFP) had donated the 50kg bags of wheat from the United States of America.
The donation was bound for Kalabo where people were said to have been bracing for starvation.
The Ngambela said the reports from Kalabo and Sesheke had been confirmed by impeccable sources.
"We received reports through a number of channels that include headmen, indunas (advisors) and chiefs about the situation in Kalabo.
We are quite aware of the magnitude of the problem. These reports have been received and verified even for Sesheke," he said.
He made an urgent appeal to the Government, the non-governmental organisations as well as the international aid agencies to act fast in order to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe on the flooded plain.
At the crack of dawn on April 13, the 18 photojournalists embarked on the gruelling assignment of an-on-the-sport study of the extent of the floods.
Armed with the Ngambela's forewarning about the turbulence of the inland lake on one hand, and the blessings of the Royal Establishment on the other, the media personnel set out from the Mongu harbour aboard an 18-foot speed boat.
Many of them might never have seen a stream in their lives let alone a vast water body that stretched out as far as the eye could see. It was scary .
But with God on their side and the desire to live long enough to tell the floods story to the rest of the world in their hearts, they fought their shivers off and clung to their fearsome weaponry comprising the most sophisticated of cameras that could pick out a mouse from afar.
It was not long before submerged fishing camps were in sight, followed by deserted villages, with roofs of the houses touching the water. The flood had swallowed everything in its path, including rice fields.
One clinic was found covered in water up to window level. But on proceeded the boat. The destination was Lealui palace, which had the most displaced people.
Before the palace were three villages that the boat reached after being on the water continuously for three hours.
The first was Mazwezi village where the appearance of flooded huts attracted the journalists. This was the village where a widow attempting to harvest submerged sugarcane with a two-weeks-old baby on her back was discovered.
Her name was Maria Kakwesha. Her husband had died in Kalabo long before the floods came. At the onset of the deluge, Maria and other inhabitants of Mazwezi village had rushed to Lealui Palace where they had found refuge in makeshift structures with families from 13 other villages.
But spine-twisting hunger drove the 25-year-old widow back to her village where her crop of sugarcane lay beneath eight metres of water.
With no man to depend on, Maria had enlisted the help of 17-year-old schoolgirl named Mutango Tapalo to handle paddling of a small canoe she had for transport.
Mutango, a Grade Eight pupil at Lealui Basic school had to paddle the boat for a total of at least four hours from Lealui and back.
That "sorry" sight of the trio aroused the journalists concern. They slowed down the boat to get a closer look.
As the vessel drifted closer, sounds of Maria's crying baby could be heard. It was time to breastfeed the infant whose face Maria shielded from a blistering sunlight with an umbrella.
Asked by the journalists what she was doing, Maria said: "This is my village. We moved to Lealui two weeks ago but I came back to fetch sugarcane because there is no food at Lealui."
Speaking in Silozi, she said she was a mother of two. She had left the other child at Lealui.
Touched by her plight, some of the media personnel dipped into their pockets to give her whatever money they had carried with them, hoping she would find her way to a safer place where she could buy something to eat for herself and the children.
It dawned upon the photojournalists that God alone knew how mother and child could live in such harsh conditions.
Dumbfounded, the visitors watched in silence as the engine on their boat roared back into life to proceed to the next village for further investigations.
At Kakulwani village, an old woman named Mwangala Malowa had resisted to leaving her abode in spite of the rising water covering houses up to the foundation level.
Mwangala had remained in the village with four children, three boys and a girl. The four had taken to a life of perching on rooftops to keep away from the water.
To get to this particular village, the media personnel had to leave the boat, roll up their trousers and wade through knee-deep water.
At Lyala village, infrastructure was still firmly attached to a piece of ground and not so many people had left the village on account of the floods. In fact, the village was hosting some of the displaced people from other affected villages.
One such person who sought refuge at the village was Kapelwa Mwangala. She was from Katongo village, which had been swept away. She described how life was for the villagers at Lyala.
"There is no food. Our crops are completely submerged. We don't have anything and the children cannot go to school because of hunger," she said.
After moving for two more hours on water, the journalists successfully reached Lealui where Chief Nalubutu, who is caretaker of the palace, narrated to them how the floods came 10 metres short of reaching the Litunga's residence.
He presented the journalists with a list of villages that had been destroyed. They included Likwangwa, Mazwezi, Mutondo, Kakulwani and Nkanda. Others were Maloyi, Situmbi, Lubama, Likanda, Kabeti, Nyiya and Nyasaya.
The chief led the journalists on a conducted tour of Lealui's basic school built by support of the micro-credit funds. Fifty-three families were accommodated in incomplete classrooms at the institution.
School headmaster Mukelabai Ngenda said that water had overwhelmed the school grounds leaving newly built toilets almost collapsing.
He showed the media personnel a block of toilets that had been knocked down after the water weakened their foundation.
"All these toilets that we built up to window level had to be razed because of the floods. The buildings had developed big cracks and sooner or later would have collapsed on their own anyway. We are preparing to build new ones," he said.
Mr Ngenda equally stressed the plight of the people at the school whom he said had lost every crop they had grown as well as every grain they had stored.
Everywhere, he said, people were desperate. After Lealui, it was time for the journalists to return to the mainland in Mongu. The silence was deafening, save of course, the drone of boat's engine.
Everyone seemed to have lapsed in deep reflection.
Yes, it was time to reflect on the hardship and gloom they had just witnessed first hand.
It was time to fashion a message to the outside world on behalf of a two-week-old baby exposed to the harshness of the elements because her mother had to find food in a dangerous place to stay alive.
It was time to cry for help for four children stranded on a rooftop because there was no more dry ground for them to play on. It was time to devise a message for the sick whose only dependable clinic lay below eight metres of raging floodwaters. It was time to seek help.
At Limulunga palace, the worries were extending beyond the floods.
"The food situation leading to the next farming season is going to be very difficult.
All the efforts put in crop production this year have been wasted because of the natural elements that have come to sweep away everything.
We hope the Government, the international donor agencies and others will come to our aid because it is important that we receive help while we are planning for the next season," said Ngambela Manyando Mukela.
The Induna Imenda Kandala Mumpeto admitted that the deluge was but one of the far-reaching effects of global environmental degradation caused by man's self-centred exploits.
The statement was also an apparent if indirect reference to the recurrent hunger still affecting some parts of Zambia.
"We must learn to tame nature. What has happened here is the result of putting too many demands on nature.
For example, here in Western Province, we have no irrigation schemes that can enable us to grow crops when it is convenient to do so.
We must be resourceful and conservative, and food shortages will be a thing of the past," he said.
Perhaps so. But for now, there is a call for help.
And unless someone responds in good time to this clarion request for aid, the receding floods that have swept away livelihoods of households are poised to unleash the greater tragedy of starvation upon the people of the Barotse Plain.
God help them.
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