CPU campaign improves  community disaster response Mr Pawadyira
Mr Pawadyira

Mr Pawadyira

Jeffrey Gogo Climate Story
LIKE many village-heads around Muzarabani, Mr Medicine Dambakurima (63) has had his leadership tested to unimaginable depths, as flash flooding continues to torment his ancestral lands, sometimes during back to back seasons.

For the 14 years he has led the 80 families of Dambakurima village in the heart of Muzarabani, some 300km north-east of Harare, the headman has witnessed, and endured catastrophe upon catastrophe.

Homes have crumbled, crops destroyed and lives lost, including those of children right before Mr Dambakurima’s eyes.

One of his villagers, Taringa Vhareta last year died after being knocked down by a hippo that had strayed into the area.

There’s only so much a simple village-head can do, especially with the half-warnings from the Meteorological Services Department (MSD) that almost always struggle to reach remote rural areas on time, if at all.

“So, what are they saying about the flooding? Do they expect an increase in such events (this season) or the rains will return to normal,” he asked me in an interview on Tuesday last week, clearly unaware of the MSD’s earlier flood warnings.

The Meteorological Services Department was high on confidence that beginning January 10, fresh flooding will again batter Muzarabani and other vulnerable areas, for the second time inside three weeks.

Now, the deficit on timeous availability of crucial climate and weather information remains one of the key factors crippling Zimbabwe’s already limited early warning mechanisms.

But thanks to a Civil Protection Unit-led educational and awareness outreach, small isolated instances of hope and encouragement are beginning to emerge, helping high risk communities respond better to extreme climate events.

“We have learnt so much,” Mr Dambakurima boasted.

“In the recent flooding, families moved to higher ground. This is what the people have been advised, to move away from low-lying areas in times of heavy rains that may lead to (flash) flooding.”

Except for crops and some few fragile mud and brick houses that were destroyed, no one from Dambakurima village actually died, said the headman.

In October, before the rains set in, the Civil Protection Unit began preparing and equipping communities in flood-prone districts such as Muzarabani, Mbire, Tsholotsho, Chikwalakwala and Middle Sabi with information on actions to follow during a flood.

There is not much high ground to talk about in areas like Dambakurima’s Muzarabani, but villagers have still received critical education on matters such as self-relocation.

“What we do is that we bring together the critical mass of the communities we visit, including local leadership, village heads and councillors,” CPU director, Mr Madzudzo Pawadyira said by telephone last Tuesday.

“We then ask that they identify the problems they face during the rainy season. Usually they tell of flash flooding.

“Then we try and get them to identify with us areas they think are safe havens, because they are familiar with the topography. We also try and find exit routes so that people can move from point A to point B.”

The message from the Civil Protection Unit is not about the quantity of rain expected in any one specific season. That information may not even be available in reliable fashion to them too given the critically limited lead times of forecasts for extreme events by the MSD.

The plan is to get the message out to communities as early as possible, even when the probability of flash flooding is unknown.

In its campaigns, the CPU is not arrogantly downloading information onto the villagers, the so-called top-down approach, which has caused several adaptation programmes that are otherwise noble to fail in many African countries.

Instead, it thrives on the great knowledge, wisdom and understanding of local climates and terrain by affected communities.

“We start to talk about their (communities) observations, the mode of flooding and how it normally happens etc,” said Mr Pawadyira. “We then talk about the (different) getaways to safe-havens.

“If we had money, more communities would have footbridges. The way to do things these days is to do community-based disaster risk reduction. “

Severely under-funded

Normally, such activities should not draw frenzied excitement from anyone, let alone an entire nation. It’s a role dutifully expected of the CPU at all times, if funded well.

The department, whose task is to prepare and protect citizens from disasters of all sorts, is not.

Of the $3,5 million needed each year to make effective “inroads into communities,” the Unit got just $300 000 from the current National Budget.

“Do not bother talking about the budget,” the CPU director said in exasperation. “Let’s talk about the planning because the budget is just not there. The country does not have money. The money we are given is peanuts and is gobbled by response issues. And if you respond today, next year you respond again, and the following year you respond again we are not making any inroads at all.”

Without proper funding, it is difficult understand how the Civil Protection Unit can plan for anything at all.

Help has arrived from elsewhere, however. A partnership with the UN Development Programme pumps $400 000 each year into the CPU’s empty coffers.

This has helped the acquisition of three response vehicles currently stationed in the danger zones of Mbire, Chiredzi and Bulilima-Mangwe, according to Mr Pawadyira. In the face of known financial handicaps at national level, the question now is whether Zimbabwe should follow Malawi’s example and send out a distress call for global intervention in the current crisis?

Mr Pawadyira found little reason for not doing so. “Every country that is hit (by disasters), if it is a third world country, must seek international assistance but Government should take the lead,” he advised.

Malawi has recently declared a state of disaster in the wake of destructive floods in some parts of that country.

It didn’t take long before the tiny nation asked for international assistance, and received some positive responses quickly.

Here, pre, during and post-flood aid has involuntarily come from development agencies such as the Red Cross and the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, which have provided temporary shelter, food and clothing.

In Muzarabani, the Red Cross runs own outreach and awareness programmes, and has also built a footbridge at one of the exit points. The CPU will soon add another in the same area.

Now, after soaking in some consistent blows for paralysing ineptitude from across many quarters, the CPU’s flood educational campaigns, though limited, have become an important tool for disaster management in small Zimbabwean communities.

The campaigns have reshaped hard line community thinking to disaster response; bridged the knowledge and information gap created by unreliable and unavailable meteorological forecasts; and created a platform from where future early warning systems can be built and developed.

To this, Mr Dambakurima testifies: “As we speak, I am negotiating with the Council (Muzarabani Rural Council) that we may be given land close to our secondary school. It is high ground there.

“I have got young couples who have moved out of their parents’ houses that need places to stay. We want them to build their homes where they can be safe with their families.”

This little success in Dambakurima, which is encompassed by destruction round about its borders, serves as a remainder to Government that it cannot continue neglecting climate change and its attendant impacts that lead to disasters.

Strong response systems need to be built on time, and that includes starting to take seriously the functions of the CPU. That can only be achieved by mobilising adequate funding for the department.

God is faithful.

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