Bisiyele’s water poverty

She starts her day with a fervent prayer before embarking on a daily routine to fetch water.

The prayer Mary John, 39, says when she goes on her knees for drops of potable water sums up the hiccups faced by peri-urban dwellers in Blantyre, exposing them to waterborne diseases including cholera which ravaged her locality for the past two years.

For rural dwellers, the shortage of clean water is not unusual, but it is even harder for those living in the peripherals of cities, like John.

The 39-year-old mother of four wakes up at 3am from her shack in the high density Bisiyere, a  shanty town near the affluent BCA suburb where former president Bakili Muluzi is spending his retirement.

Due to financial constraints, John mostly fetches water from an open well, about half a kilometre from the house where she lives with her husband and one of her children.

The unprotected well, with no constant water flow, serves about 50 households.

“I brave a cold morning breeze to wait for my turn to draw. The well often dries up by 8am. It takes between 30 and 40 minutes before I fill up my pail,” she says.

Her husband relies on back-breaking piecework at Limbe Market near the informal settlement.

Due to poverty and the rising cost of living, the family has sent their other children to their grandmother in the village, where life seems more affordable.

Says John: “Every day, I have to set aside K300 to buy four buckets of water at a kiosk, almost 400 metres away.

“It is hard to find that money daily. We need at least K5 000 for daily needs, yet my husband gets no more than K3 000. As a result, we resort to fetching water from the shallow well.”

Her neighbour, Patricia Manyela echoes the water woes, heightened with financial difficulties.

The family of six requires at least 60 litres of clean water, but she can’t afford it because she earns below K5 000 a day.

“It is a hustle. I can’t get all the water from the kiosk because my income is so low. We also buy food, charcoal and other basics that don’t come cheap. Finding money is very difficult. We only find solace in water at the shallow well,” she says.

Glyn Mlelemba, who is in charge of the kiosk, says widespread poverty pushes most Bisiyele residents to shun the stall and opt for the shallow wells and nearby river, which are filthy and contaminated.

According to Water Mission Malawi, in 80 percent of households facing water problems, girls and women like John and Manyela are responsible for the work of pipes—fetching water for their families.

Mary knows the dangers of drawing from the shallow wells and the river as the area was hit hard by Malawi’s deadliest cholera outbreak from 2022 to 2023.

“But what can we do? We are living in real hard economic times. The water is unprotected I know, but this is hopeless,” she adds.

To make matters worse, she cannot afford chlorine and other water treatment chemicals.

Judith Muyenza, a health volunteer for Bangwe Health Centre who oversees part of Bisiyere, said half of the community uses untreated water from unsafe sources.

“As health workers, we advise the community to use chlorine and Water Guard. If they can’t afford water treatment chemicals, we encourage them to boil drinking water to kill the germs,” she said.

John’s household is prone to waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea and bilharzia, as she washes clothes and fetches water from the contaminated river where some residents dump their waste.

At the river, a few metres from where John draws water is a dumpsite for soiled diapers and food leftovers.

The dump fouls the air.

Even the smelly water from the shallow well threatens her family’s health. The well is not covered. The long walks from the well to her house expose the water to germs that cause waterborne diseases.

The situation is common in the country’s major cities, which increasingly welcome an influx of Malawians escaping poverty and degrading conditions in rural areas.

In 2023, Blantyre was one of the worst-hit cities by cholera, which claimed 227 lives of the 8 929 patients in the city.

During the prolonged public health crisis, Minister of Water and Sanitation Abida Mia underscored the importance of access to safe water for all in the push to make cholera history by 2030.

Despite the government’s efforts to ensure 90 percent of Malawians have access to clean and piped water, the reality is starkly different on the ground.

John’s daily struggle testifies to the economic hardships faced by many Malawians, showing safe water remains beyond the reach of many even though official reports tell a glowing success story.