Taking disaster management to people

There are scenes etched on Cecilia Nyakhuwa’s mind of a rainy afternoon she spent indoors with her family in a quiet Chapinga Village in Nsanje two years ago.

Chatting the afternoon away, little did she anticipate that the pouring rain would soon birth a flood to plunge the village into a disaster.

In the hours that followed, angry water devoured houses, displacing 689 people. Eighty-nine hectares of knee-high maize were washed away. A body of a man, who had been swept away by the fast running dirty water, was to be found buried in a heap of mud the next day.

Days later, the displaced households—which were still lurching in the disaster’s aftermath in make-shift homes that lacked almost everything—were severely attacked by a cholera outbreak that resulted from poor sanitary conditions.

It is the untold misery of the sick, hungry and destitute people that bore a passion in Nyakhuwa, 69, to play an active role in mitigating floods and other disasters, including drought and strong winds, that haunt many parts of Nsanje periodically.

Nyakhuwa, who serves as vice-chairperson of her Village Civil Protection Committee (VCPC), observes that although natural disasters hit all and sundry, their effects are more pronounced on women, children, the disabled and the elderly.

“The elderly, disabled and children struggle to run, whereas women mind too many things; they want to make sure everyone is safe and some even want to rescue as much property as possible and this endangers their lives,” she says.

Her observation is shared by the Catholic Development Commission of Malawi (Cadecom) which launched disaster preparedness interventions in the district in 2011 to build resilience in people who live in disaster-prone areas.

“During a flood, able-bodied people are able to move to higher ground quicker, unlike the disabled. A typical example is climbing a tree to avoid being washed away by running water…women cannot easily climb the tree and they are also vulnerable because of their multiple roles such as reproduction; lactating mothers and pregnant women are more vulnerable to disasters,” says Cadecom national secretary Carsterns Mulume.

Mulume notes that government’s centralised approach to disaster preparedness and management has, for a long time, left out the most vital stakeholders, the people affected; hence, Cadecom’s adoption of a community-centred approach to disaster management that also seeks to incorporate disadvantaged groups such as women.

Cadecom, through VCPC, trains community members on how to determine and detect early disaster warning signs, apart from seeking to mainstream disaster risk reduction (DRR) in all development interventions both at district and national level.

Nyakhuwa and nine other VCPC members spend a good number of their days conducting awareness campaigns to warn Chapinga villagers about natural disasters.

“We are currently experiencing heavy winds, so we conduct meetings where we appeal to people to renovate their houses to ensure that the structures withstand not only the winds, but also rains as we are approaching the rainy season.

“We also sensitise villagers to the need to plant drought-resistant crops and practise good hygiene to avoid disease outbreaks,” says Nyakhuwa, whose committee has 50-50 gender representation.

But working with VCPCs and other community-based structures is not as rosy as it sounds, according to Mulume, who says some of the structures are not reliable because they do not have the requisite capacity to carry out projects.

“According to Cadecom research, these structures are not functional due to lack of funding from government—they were established, but not capacitated, a task which has been left to NGOs working in the sector.

“However, in some districts where Cadecom has been working in collaboration with Oxfam and where other NGOs have similar interventions [in Nsanje and Chikhwawa, for example] these structures have been capacitated and they are functional,” says Mulume.

For Cadecom, the journey does not end at empowering the likes of Nyakhuwa, but also spearheading DRR activities such as constructing of protection bands along the river banks where there are frequent floods; construction of evacuation centres with all necessary things for a decent living for people and lobbying government to plan and budget for disasters.

“Currently, government has no separate vote on disaster reduction management. In case of a disaster, the Department of Disaster Management—which falls under the Office of the President and Cabinet—will consult the Treasury who will then ask for money from the Ministry of Finance.

“Therefore, it takes more than three weeks to respond to disasters and truth be told, Malawi cannot respond to any disaster within 24 hours as more time is wasted on bureaucracy,” says Mulume.

Principal Secretary in the Department of Disaster Management Affairs Jeffrey Kanyinji says the department is lobbying for a disaster risk management policy whose implementation will resolve funding hiccups, among others.

“Disaster response is sometimes not immediate as the ministry links with district commissioners’ offices to verify the extent of the disaster and this can take days.

“But we are decentralising disaster management so that district councils can be funded to enable them to respond to some disasters at the district level,” he says.