By Tichaona Zindoga
Mary Mutanga shelters under the shade of a tree near a bridge over Mukuvisi River along Seke Road, her six-month baby suckling from her flat-looking breast.
She seems oblivious of the life around her as people look at her from a distance without curiosity or attention or an iota of care for her life.
Neither does she seem to care too, for she has created a buffer between her and the larger conventional society, with the homeless community along the banks of the Mukuvisi River being the only society she is able to relate to closely.
After all, being a sunny day during what has been an exceptionally wet summer season this far, she is able to relax outside her damp and clammy hovel made of plastic paper and threadbare pieces of what used to be blankets.
She shares this shack, which barely rises above the ground, with another woman, a mother of two.
Her laundry, comprising of rags in different stages of tatters and an odd new bright red dress hang languidly from nearby trees while a small pot sits on small fire whose blue smoke spirals into the sky.
The stream below hisses as it flows, exuding the acrid smell of raw sewage that is let into the Mukuvisi River.
In a life where one is generally regarded as an inconvenience to the larger society, Mutanga believes their tales are at best not heard and worst they should be wiped off the face of the town.
Just recently, the city of Harare fatally announced that it had given up on the city’s homeless.
Homeless people, in squatter settlements and on the streets are in their thousands in Harare and while they are fingered in crime and prostitution and suchlike ills, their needs are forgotten.
In a word, there is plight in the blight of homelessness.
“The problem is that no one seems to care about the challenges we face as we are regarded as criminals or mentally disturbed people,” laments Mutanga.
She claims she has moved from one shack to another and one “squatter camp” to another since the death of her first husband in 2002 whom she lived with in Epworth.
She could not raise money for rentals and thus embarked on the free-for-all land along Mukuvisi.
But it has been a life of hell.
“We are at the mercy of the elements here and with such a rainy season, we experience a lot of problems ranging from diarrhoea, scabies, measles, and cholera,” she says.
“With the grass growing all around us, there are all kinds of vectors like mosquitoes and ticks and lice; you can imagine what it is like to live here.
“As you can see there are no proper sanitary facilities and we have to relieve ourselves in the tall grass and bush. Our main concern is that of health,” she added.
As the sweet sickly smell that hangs over the grass, mixing with the strong acridity of Mukuvisi’s water, Mutanga’s fears are not unfounded.
In fact, authorities such as the aid group, Medecins Sans Frontieres has stated that communicable diseases, especially tuberculosis and cholera, wreak havoc among people who have limited access to clean water and toilets.
Mutanga’s neighbour, dreadlocked Irvine Puranga (25) says he was born on the street and has known no other home except the streets and the shacks along Mukuvisi River.
“We live in the fear of a major disease outbreak like that cholera outbreak in 2008,” he says amid puffs of smoke.
“It’s easy to fall ill because of the water and food, and where we cook it. But, we survive because sometimes you get hardened to these things,” he says.
He relates how people, especially children usually fall ill, and sometimes die.
“We do not have the money to go and seek treatment. You just hope any illness you contract is not that bad.
“Yet it has not always been the case and we have seen deaths here,” he says.
Apart from water-borne and airborne diseases that usually affect people here, there are also sexually transmitted diseases that time and again afflict the community.
Puranga says sex-for-food dynamics and casual sex among the poor homeless could be driving the diseases.
“Some women stay here for the day but go to Mbare, Epworth or the city centre for prostitution and they are at the centre of spreading sexually transmitted diseases”, he claims.
Other people, like the ones that have set camp in disused buildings along Luck Street, downtown Harare, are suffering the same fate, albeit under somewhat “better” conditions.
“We are quite lucky here because we have a roof over our heads”, rhapsodises 31-year-old Janet Siwalo who says she has two children.
“The major problem here is that of sanitation as we use alleys to relieve ourselves and we have to beg or steal food to stay alive. At the end of the day you don’t have much choice as to what you eat or where you relieve yourself.
“Had we better accommodation, which I think we won’t in this lifetime, things would be easier for us and the children. But you know we can’t afford the rents and all,” she said.
The journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases notes that homelessness is an increasing social and public health problem worldwide because of poor living conditions and limited access to healthcare systems by the homeless and thus they are persons exposed to many communicable infections.
It cites the United Nations, classifying homelessness as either “absolute” or “relative”.
The former describes the conditions of persons without physical shelter.
“Relative homelessness” describes the condition of those who have physical shelter, but one that does not meet basic standards of health and safety, such as access to safe water and sanitation, personal safety, and protection from weather elements.
It notes that an estimated 100 million persons worldwide experience either absolute or relative homelessness.
“Homelessness is associated with numerous behavioural, social, and environmental risks that expose persons to many communicable infections, which may spread among the homeless and lead to outbreaks that can become serious public health concerns,” the journal says.
Some diseases associated with homelessness include tuberculosis, scabies, body louse infestation and influenza.
The journal regrets: “Homeless people face many barriers to accessing healthcare systems; these factors contribute to increasing the spread of infections.”
It counsels that implementing efficient strategies to survey and prevent the spread of communicable infections among the homeless should be a public health priority.
“Evidence suggests that appropriate public health interventions can be effective in preventing and controlling the spread of numerous transmitted diseases among homeless persons, which is a public health concern both for the homeless and the larger population.
“These interventions should be tailored to the targeted populations and focused on areas where the homeless are more likely to reside,” it says.
Among others, medical care, provision of shelter, improvement of personal clothing and bedding hygiene, systematic vaccination schedules to prevent communicable diseases in the homeless should be prioritised.
Unfortunately, much focus has seemingly been placed on eradicating the people themselves rather than the problems they face.
Street children have been the luckier lot, at least in the limited sort of way, as interventions such as the provision of food and clothing and shelter and rehabilitation have been given by various organisations such as Streets Ahead.
However, for the older members of the homeless community, they continue to be regarded as blight on the city which must be snuffed out.
The country has been hit by the economic malaise of the past decade that has seen social services taking a plunge, one reason that could have led to the failure by Government to implement policy on the homeless.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, which oversees, inter-alia, delivery of services for the betterment of the people’s livelihoods, has not been able to provide enough social safety nets to the vulnerable, including the homeless.
Presenting the 2011 budget statement last year, Finance Minister Mr Tendai Biti conceded that following the decade-long socio-economic crisis in the country, the number of vulnerable groups “has surged while Government-funded social protection programmes have almost collapsed”.
He noted that Government social protection coverage and actual expenditures had remained low with administrative costs consuming the bulk of resources in most programmes.
“The creation of a Fair Economy”, he said, “requires strong investment in social safety nets and welfare, something that we have not adequately managed to do in the last few years”.
To compound this state of affairs, housing for poor households has been elusive against the backdrop of a swelling population.
It is estimated that Harare only has a backlog of up to one million of those intending to build a home for their families.
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