Kotwa: All that remains of the Kapotesa Dam, which once provided vital water for crops and livestock in this remote part of Zimbabwe, is a bed of sand and a patch of mud.
Nearby, farmer Georgina Kwengwere walks among maize stalks parched by the drought that is ravaging her land and leaving millions in need of food aid.
“After all the effort and using all our savings to buy seeds, I didn’t harvest anything,” the 54-year-old woman told AFP, shaking her head dejectedly. “Not a single ear of corn.
Kapotesa Dam dried up in May, Kwengwere said.
When the rains are good, water from a dam in the north-eastern district of Mudzi allows Kwengwere and her husband to grow vegetables to feed themselves and their six children. There is even a surplus that can be sold for cash to buy livestock and pay school fees.
Now Kwengwere has to join other villagers on a five kilometer daily walk to a trading center in the small town of Kotwa to look for odd jobs so they can buy food.
On a good day he makes about three dollars; on a bad day, he makes the long walk home to his Mafuta village empty-handed.
Like most villagers in the district of about 164,000 people, her family limited meals to just two a day.
“Most of us don’t have any food at home,” said Takesure Chimbu, 58, also from Mafuta. “Without water, everything is down,” he told AFP.
Malnutrition cases in Mudzi have jumped by about 20 percent in the past three months, district medical officer Kudzai Madamombe said.
“Food is quite expensive in the district, especially because we are prone to drought,” he said, appealing for government assistance.
Faced with this spike in malnutrition, health professionals in Mudzi have come up with a nutritional porridge called maworesa, which means “the best” in the local Shona language.
It is made with cheap, locally sourced ingredients such as eggs, sugar beans and baobab fruit supplied by villagers.
The porridge was prepared to cover basic nutritional needs including carbohydrates, proteins and fruits and vegetables, Madamombe said.
Zimbabwe and neighboring Malawi and Zambia are among the countries in southern Africa most affected by malnutrition after a severe drought that experts say has been exacerbated by the El Nino phenomenon.
At least 7.6 million people, nearly half the population, are in need of aid, the United Nations said in May. Children under five and pregnant and lactating women are most affected.
“The harvest was not what it should have been,” UNICEF Zimbabwe head of communications Yves Willemot told AFP. “Most people live in a pretty desperate situation with insufficient access to water and food.”
“So far we have not received any contributions apart from internal sources and sources from the UN vault,” Willemot said.
