The country the rain has forgotten
HALF OF CHILDREN UNDER FIVE ALREADY STUNTED
Every morning, residents of a village in southern Madagascar’s Amboasary Sud district set off on an eight-hour round-trip journey to collect water from the nearest river.
Along the thirsty way, some give up and instead use plastic jerry cans to scoop up whatever they can find in potholes along the road – muddy liquid that aid workers jokingly call “chocolate water”.
This region of the southern African island nation has been chronically poor for decades, but a series of droughts, which government officials say are driven by climate change, have left close to a million people struggling to cope.
Drought is increasing the risk of malnutrition and could cause deaths in children younger than five, half of whom already suffer from stunting, Norohasina Rakotoarison, a spokesperson for Madagascar’s ministry of the environment, said.
In the south of the island, where many people farm for a living, the rainy season is getting shorter and shorter. Rains that once stretched from October to March now fall only between December and February.
A recent El Nino event – a warming of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific that often causes drought in southern Africa – aggravated already dry conditions, driving hunger not only in Madagascar but across southern Africa.
That El Nino has now ended, but many families have not recovered and harsh weather continues, they say.
“The air is more violent. The wind is very strong,” Soja Voalahtsesylvain, the chief of AnkilibeVahavola, said. Around the area, “there’s no production because the land is very dry”.
“It’s our everyday life now,” he said. “We wait for the rain because our main issue is lack of water. We don’t know when it will come.”
In Madagascar, nine in 10 people live on less than $2 (R26) a day, according to Unicef.
Poverty is even worse in the dry south. Bumpy roads last paved in colonial days impede the delivery of aid, and mean even emergency transport is difficult.
Hoasie, a woman in her 40s who goes by one name, said she was forced to carry her 3-year-old son 20km to the nearest hospital in November, after large bumps broke out on his body. It turned out he was suffering from acute malnutrition and a lack of protein. But the drought makes it difficult to feed him better, she said.
“We’re farmers, so when there is no rain we have no crops,” she said.
In September, construction began on a much-needed pipeline that will carry clean water much closer to 13 thirsty communities in this area of southern Madagascar.
The pipeline, funded by Madagascar’s ministry of water and Unicef and expected to be working by March, will provide household water for about 46 000 people.
“It’s an emergency to complete this pipeline,” said Heriniaina Rakotomalala, a civil engineer who works with Unicef on the project.
For now, in AnkilibeVahavola, home to about 3 000 people, families are trying to get by using a traditional lending system, in which poor families borrow water or food from neighbours and eventually pay it back when the rains come. But this year, it’s been more difficult. –