It’s raining cholera in dying Zimbabwe

By CHIPO SITHOLE

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Shamiso Mushonga, eight months’ pregnant with her third child, feels like a prisoner in her two-room shack. She’s terrified that she or her children could be exposed to cholera if they walk the streets of their neighborhood in Budiriro, a densely populated slum on the outskirts of Harare.

She has good reason to worry. The disease has already killed her husband, along with more than 1,100 others. And the current epidemic shows no signs of abating.

Budiriro, a vast, squalid wasteland of shacks amid piles of refuse, is home to hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans. It has neither a sewage system nor a fresh water supply. With the rainy season now in full swing, pools of human waste, along with the runoff from the mounds of trash, collect in the streets, creating a virtual Petri dish for disease.

“It’s raining cholera, literally,” Mushonga said.

International aid agencies say conditions appears to be getting worse despite their best efforts to stop the spread of the water-borne disease.

“People are living in extremely bad conditions here,” said a water and sanitation expert with Doctors without Borders who declined to allow his name to be used out of concern for his security. “As you can see, there are mountains of rubbish everywhere. So, when the rains started coming, it washed all this rubbish and excrement through the area.”

Closed hospitals

With hospitals in the capital closed and the nation’s public health system in total collapse, the makeshift health centers set up by relief agencies have been completely overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, local residents wait for hours to receive a bucket of clean water supplied by a U.N. relief agency. But when that supply runs out, they’re forced to gather water from the filthy pools that collect in the streets.

The situation is similar in other parts of the capital, as well as other areas of the country.

When signs of the cholera epidemic first emerged in late summer, President Robert Mugabe blamed sanctions imposed by Western countries for preventing his government from purchasing chemicals needed to treat the country’s water supply.

He even went so far as to accuse the United Kingdom of engaging in biological warfare against Zimbabwe.

It wasn’t until early December that the government acknowledged that the situation was out of control and appealed to the international community for assistance.

The response was immediate, with many countries and relief organizations providing drinking water and water purification systems.

But relief agencies were outraged when Mugabe claimed that the epidemic had been brought under control even as health officials reported it was continuing to spread into the countryside, as well as neighboring Botswana, South Africa and Mozambique.

Meanwhile, the country’s sanitation crisis, seen as the root cause of the spreading epidemic, continues to worsen.

“The situation is pathetic. Our life has become worse than pigs. The overwhelming stench is just unbearable,” said Raymond Mutasa, a Budiriro resident.

The government appears powerless to do anything about it.

Mushonga will be staying inside with her two children at least until the end of the rainy season.

“I cannot lose any more members of my family,” she said.

X Chipo Sithole is a reporter in Zimbabwe who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization headquartered in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Service.