Disadvantaged farmer banks on irrigation programme

Fredson Paleke, 48, simply grinned when asked to demonstrate how he performs his daily chores.

“Just wait,” Paleke said, walking to where a motorcycle was parked.

Oblivious to the staring eyes, he got onto the Lifo motorcycle and turned the ignition key on as the right hand held the steering handle bar.

Paleke kick-started the motorcycle once and the machine sputtered to life. He then skillfully rode it around for about two minutes, leaving those who had challenged him utterly dumbfounded.

The father of five, from Jana Village in Traditional Authority (T/A) Makhuwira in Chikwawa District, has one arm and with it he literally provides for his family.

“There is a tendency among people with disabilities to live on handouts. I hate it as begging diminishes one’s dignity. This is why I am involved in this development programme,” Paleke said.

He was referring to the Shire Valley Transformation Programme (SVTP), Malawi’s flagship project which, if successfully implemented, will have a huge impact on the economy. 

It is common to see many people with disabilities begging for help in cash or kind. There are some, however, who have confidence in themselves and detest alms.

Paleke is one such person, determined not to let his disability hinder him from bringing his ambitions to fruition. He has now been buoyed up by the arrival of the SVTP, expecting to benefit a lot from it.

“I didn’t expect I would live to see a programme of this magnitude. Our lives will not be the same 20 years from today; once it has been implemented,” the subsistence farmer assured this writer.  

The SVTP is an irrigation programme that aims to improve lives of people of the Shire Valley and across Malawi through commercial farming.

The 14-year SVTP got off the ground in April 2020, and is expected to provide solutions to problems of shortage of foreign exchange and food insecurity when completed.

The largest of its kind in southern Africa, the SVTP was conceived in the early 1940s and was prioritised in the then government development blueprint called the Shire Valley Project.

The programme will irrigate 43 370 hectares by abstracting water from the Shire River at Kapichira Dam and conveying it to the irrigable area in Chikwawa and Nsanje districts through canals.

The main objective of the SVTP is to increase agricultural productivity and commercialisation for its targeted 48 400 households in the two districts.

The Department of Irrigation (DoI) in the Ministry of Agriculture is implementing the SVTP with support from the country’s development partners.

These are the Malawi Government, World Bank, African Development Bank and the Opec Fund for International Development. 

Construction of the 118-kilometre main canal from Kapichira Dam to Bangula is underway, with contractors Conduril of Portugal and China’s Sinohydro Corporation Limited involved in the works. 

The SVTP will not operate like other existing irrigation schemes. Targeted farmers will consolidate their parcels of land to form large commercial farms between 600 hectares and 1 600 hectares each.

Farming will be done on a commercial basis using motorised machinery such as centre pivots—a method of irrigation—and tractors.

The farms will operate as cooperatives and agribusiness companies will be employed to manage them. Five companies are now in the process of being recruited.

A cooperative, according to search engine Google, is an association of persons that is owned and controlled by the people to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations.

The needs are met through a jointly-owned and democratically controlled business.

Fifteen cooperatives have so far been established and legally registered in the first phase of the programme. It is anticipated that there will be 30 cooperatives altogether.

The consolidated pieces of land will be converted as shares. Land owners will receive dividends according to their land shares.

Paleke belongs to Katundu and Chingalumba cooperatives in T/A Katunga, where his two pieces of land have been consolidated.

He said he did the right thing to join the cooperatives as some locals at first were skeptical about the intentions of the SVTP due to the misinformation they were receiving.

“If what we are being told in trainings are to be believed, then we should expect better days ahead through the cooperatives,” Paleke said in an interview.

He said: “The programme has to be commended for embracing people with disabilities. I wasn’t born like this.”

He went on to recount how he lost part of his left arm.

He said his parents told him it was on a Wednesday in the late 1970s while in his boyhood when the accident happened as he and two of his peers were playing in a tree at his home.

“As we were playing in the tree, one of the boys pulled my leg and I lost my balance. I fell to the ground on the left side and within no time, my left arm began to swell before darkening,” he said.

“My parents were not at home when the incident happened. When they arrived home, they rushed me to Montfort Mission Hospital at Nchalo within Chikwawa.”

When the mission hospital examined Paleke’s arm, it decided to refer him to the district hospital which also referred him to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre.

At QECH, Paleke’s parents were told that the part between the hand and the elbow had become gangrenous and that there was nothing they could do apart from amputating it.

“Doctors said I was a healthy child and would be fine if they cut off the part that had decayed. My parents gave their consent that is why I am like this today,” Paleke said.

He was in hospital for four months for the wound to heal and went back to school after he was discharged, resuming Standard 1 class. But he said the reception he received at school surprised him.

He recalled that while teachers at his school sympathised with him, he became the target of his peers’ jokes because he had one hand.

“My peers poked fun at me because of that, but teachers felt sorry for me. They encouraged me not to let the insults distract me from learning,” Paleke said.

He said the encouragement he received from his parents and teachers enabled him to successfully complete his secondary education in 2000.

He said he used to perform well in class and that were it not for the problem of fees, which he often faced, he would have done much better in his Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) exams.

Paleke said his parents were poor and would often do odd jobs to raise fees for his secondary school education. He would also do the same, at times working in other people’s gardens.

“I applied for bursaries several times but the efforts were in vain,” he said, further saying he married in 2001, out of frustration.

In 2010, Paleke became a volunteer, working as a growth monitoring assistant at an Under-fives clinic in his area. Government later employed him as an HIV diagnostic assistant, going from door to door.

“When the government saw that I was doing a good job, I was moved to the district hospital and then sent to Blantyre to attend a three-week intensive training to do with HIV,” he recalled.

It was while he was at the district hospital, working temporarily that Paleke, who at the time could ride a bicycle despite having one arm, learnt how to ride a motorcycle after a health worker told him to try it.

The district hospital had a scooter which a health surveillance assistant (HSA) and an auxiliary nurse were using for their field work, according to Paleke.

He said: “The HSA one day told me that since I could ride a push bike with one arm, I could also ride a motorcycle. It only took me two days to learn how to ride the scooter.”

“I wanted to prove wrong those who said I would never do any work requiring the use of two hands.”

After attending the HIV intensive course in Blantyre, he joined a non-governmental organisation in Chikwawa as an HIV diagnostic assistant on his return and worked for the NGO for five years.

Paleke said he owed his parents, primary school teachers and his village headman a huge debt of gratitude for encouraging him to lead a positive life after suffering the misfortune at a tender age.

“I thank all of them for tirelessly encouraging me. Otherwise, I would have despaired of life,” he said.

Paleke praised the SVTP for being inclusive, saying people with disabilities are often segregated and rarely given opportunities to participate in development programmes to improve their lives.

“People with disabilities are also important and have a big role to play in the development of the country. We should not be looked down upon. We thank Shire Valley for taking us on board,” he said. 

The cooperatives being set up under the SVTP have some members with varying disabilities, including one farmer who is visually impaired participating, hoping to change his life for the better. 

The project is designed in such a way that it considers all those owning land within the irrigable areas, according to Adrian Masebo, SVTP Agriculture Commercialisation Specialist.

Masebo said: “All farmers are considered regardless of their gender, disability, ethnicity, etc. We feel an inclusion of people with disabilities is a positive development in the project as it will transform their lives.”

As for Paleke, he is banking on the SVTP to realise his cherished goals of owning a decent house, become food-secure, and send his children to good schools.

“I don’t doubt it. I will certainly achieve my ambitions through the SVTP. I don’t see myself as having a disability. It is you who see me with one arm,” he said.