Geisha: An endangered village in Mzuzu City

As Malawi commemorates 50 years of independence today, some communities still wonder what is it we are celebrating for. Some residents in Mzuzu are among those who find the celebrations unfelt–thanks to system failures.

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In their minds, the brains behind Mzuzu City envisaged Geisha becoming a properly planned township. Five years ago, the city council fashioned a blueprint paving the way for demolition of houses and partitioning of the suburb into standard plots belonging to the Department of Lands. However,the grand dream has plunged about 2 500 people into uncertainty, darkness and dangers of drinking from unsafe water sources.

Entering or leaving Mzuzu at night? The township on the northern margins of the city strikes travellers on M1, the country’s longest transport corridor, as a stunning spreadsheet of darkness. A total of blackness with a skyline of distant bulbs illuminating Mchengautuwa, Hilltop, Katoto and other suburbs in the neighbourhood.

When the sun shines, figures of women carrying buckets of water are common. However, what usually goes unnoticed as the women become silhouettes of poor access to water is that they are actually belabouring for untreated water from shallow wells and open streams as the heads at the city council have entered the fifth year groping for an end to the lingering vagueness over the legality of the settlement.

“We are living dangerously,” says Maureen Mwala sitting outside her house in the township yet to be connected to the national electricity grid and Northern Region Water Board’s pipeline, reportedly because it belongs to the Ministry of Lands.

The endangered community occupies a marshy setting with numerous wells and pit latrines lying next to each other.

“They say we are in the city, but we drink untreated water from unguarded wells and streams as if we are still in the village,” Mwala laments.

In 2011, the United Nations Children Fund (Unicef) and World Health Organisation(WHO) reported that only 83 in 100 people in Malawi were using improved water. Geisha residents were stuck on the side of the unreached 17 percent at the peril of waterborne diseases.

At that time, the UN agencies indicated that nearly 94 percent of people in urban areas boasted use of improved water. Unfortunately, Geisha was still Geisha–cut off from the utility services other city residents were enjoying without let or hindrance.

Three years on, Geisha is still Geisha. Unlike the rest of Mzuzu City, nothing aptly sums up their predicament like the locals’ lamentation that they could be living worse than their counterparts in remote areas where only 81 of 100 people have access to improved water, especiallyboreholes.

No taps. No borehole. Not all is well with the widespread wells.

Elders of the “village in the city” say the dark nights and milky water evoke memories of underdevelopment that characterised the area 20 years ago when it was Masenjere, a wild garden of elephant grass. Now, the township has been renamed Geisha in reference to brick-and-mortar billboard advertising a soap brand of the same name manufactured by Unilever South East Africa.

“Houses have replaced the elephant grass, but we are still drinking water from unprotected wells and streams as it were before we were part of the city,” says AmonNyika, a bloc leader who prefers calling himself village head of the area within the city.

Add the water woes to the power blackout, which makes Geisha residents more than just human faces of the 2010 Census figures–that about 92 in every 100 Malawians have no access to Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) grid–and a flurry of questions come to mind.

“Fifty years after Malawi attained independence, people think we are part of Mzuzu City. Are we?” wonders YakobeThika.

Yes, they are. A signpost marking the southern ends of Mzuzu lies about 4km beyond Geisha. Their councilor,YonaMkandawire, is one of the newly-elected 15 who have voting powers in the city’s local council. Just this year, the council descended on the locality to number every house so that they can start paying city rates.

Yet so neglected is the locality that the council should expect “a relentless war” from the disgruntled residents, says councillorMkandawire.

During a local government debate organised by the National Initiative for Civic Education (NICE), the councillor said: “The city shall never know peace unless the Geisha situation is solved. The people were told that they can’t get tap water and electricity. The tragedy is that the water table is very high, but the locals sink wells and pit latrines adjacent to each other.

“The residents have always been pressing for answers because they are still grappling with high levels of diarrhoea, cholera and other waterborne diseases because we are drinking our own excretions.”

Despite being denied utility services, the houses have been marked and enumerated by the Council in an exercise Mzuzu City chief executive officer Thomas Chirwa said will increase payers of city rates from 9 000 to 40 000. Chirwa reveals that the city loses about K100 million because only four in 10 property owners do not remit the rates.

Nonetheless, the city boss agrees that worsening conditions in Geisha is not a new challenge, hinting at the stalemate in efforts to liberate the residents from the sticky situation reducing them to perennial sufferers of waterborne diseases.

“The question of Geisha is an old story. We have been talking about it for five years, but it’s a planning area where the Department of Lands will demarcate plots,” says the city boss.

He reckons the people will be compensated and resettled if the councilors approve the plan.

“We will only start pushing for the people to move away when the councillors endorse the plan. When that time comes, all affected people will have to be compensated,” he explained.

The residents are upbeat that the election of councillors will end their protracted plight. The city council has been running without councilors since 2005 when the term of those elected in 2000 expired. After the five-year wait blighted by an amendment of the Local Government Act empowering  the President to set a date for the election of councillors, the vacancies were finally filled on May 20 this year when the country had its first tripartite elections.

“For the past years, we have been wondering where the city council is getting the powers to force us out by denying us basic services. We are not illegal immigrants, but bonafide Malawians,” says Thika.

He terms the marking of houses a testimony to their legitimacy, saying: “Having deprived us of vital services for years, why are the city authorities so eager to start collecting revenue from us?”

This hypocrisy must come to an end because lives are being endangered unnecessarily, the affected community demands.

Save for the residents, the said danger flashes with vividness at Geisha Primary School where about 700 pupils have no access to safe water. Three years ago, the school got a pump which allows the children to fill up a water tank while playing on the spinning pump. The water was rusty, says head teacher Jane Chione. It stopped working last year. Now, the children rely on water from a resident’s well for drinking and preparing porridge.

On a chilly Thursday morning, four women were spotted returning from a neighbouring well with buckets containing the untreated water for porridge.

Before and after eating the meal,the World Food Programme and government credit with keeping vulnerable children in school, the learners wash their hands, cups and plates using the hazardous water.

One of the volunteers, Eneless Banda, explained how her Standard One child has become a chronic victim of diarrheal ailments reportedly resulting from the milky water resembling that in her bucket.

“We rely on the well because it is our only source of water, but it contains impurities. We have no water chemicals. Every month, my child misses classes due to diarrhoea,” said Banda, entering the kitchen where the porridge, credited with keeping vulnerable children in school, is cooked.

Geisha school committee member Matthews Soko fears absenteeism and truancy are on the rise due to the decried water-related diseases.

“Children are suffering and something needs to be done urgently to stop an outbreak of cholera and diarrhoea from occurring,” bemoans Soko.

Head teacher Chione could only confirm cases of absenteeism, but not the cause. However, her cry is the community’s.

“We have lagged behind for years, but the water situation is a curable problem,” she says.