Emma Bello is a student of political science at the University of Malawi. We have gone to Katchakhwala, in the country’s Nkula area, one of the sites where the NOMA Master’s degree student conducted her fieldwork in 2009. She has heard that the village has finally got a borehole and wants to see if it’s true.
Water gives life, water sustains life – water is life. Bello describes the lives of the people she met here as not ‘real human lives’. They had not had a bath in weeks; washing was a luxury. She says she could have peeled the dirt of the villagers’ clothes – and skin infections were rife.
Bello reveals: “In the rainy season they would drink from the stream next to the cattle and goats. I told them to boil the water but often they would just drink it straight from the stream.”
When the rainy season was over and the stream disappeared the women would spend three hours a day fetching water from the closest borehole. Ironically the Nkula dam, which supplies the city of Blantyre with water, is located only a few kilometres from the village. The water pipes literally lie beneath the villagers’ feet.
BY THE STREAM: This is the stream where the village people would fetch their water during the rainy season, filling up their buckets alongside drinking cows and goats. Political science student, Emma Bello, says she was shocked to see their living conditions.
Improved marriages
As we approach the village, Bello sees for herself that news of the borehole is true. Two women with babies on their backs are pumping water and filling their buckets. We can see from an inscription in the cement that the borehole was made by UNICEF in November 2009.
“WE NEED MORE”:Chimwemwe Douglas washes his clothes in the two new basins. This used to be a rare event when the village didn’t have any water. “But please, tell them that we need more boreholes here,” he says.
One of the women fetching water, Maria Nankhoma John, says: “This borehole has improved our marriages.”
Why? Well, before the borehole, women would have to leave their homes at midnight, taking their babies with them, and walk for one-and-a-half hours to fetch a bucket of water. Then they would have to walk all the way back home. It was a dangerous journey. There was the constant threat of attack, either from thugs or wildlife such as snakes. Meanwhile at home, husbands would often create difficulties, as they could not understand why it was necessary to walk at night. But the women had to. During the day, there would be so many people at the borehole that they could spend the entire day waiting.
We meet Chimwemwe Douglas, a young man washing clothes. He’s very happy about the new borehole.
“But please, let them know we need more,” he says.
PUMPING WATER: Angela Nachisale Membe lives in the village of Katchakhwala. She used to walk for three hours every night to fetch water. Today she only has to take a short walk.
Activist approach
It was after visiting this village that Bello decided her research had to take an activist turn so she went to the local UNICEF office to say they had to help the villagers by making a borehole.
Bello explains: “Rural people are so vulnerable. When I came from the field site I felt so bad. It was really pathetic how these people lived."
Bello’s research started with her wondering why some places had plenty of boreholes while others didn’t. She looked at the statistics and it seemed that Malawi was doing well on the issue of water-security. But why did villages in dire need of water not have any?
After a decade of decentralisation in Malawi – meaning that the needs expressed by the people should be the driving force in development – why then did these places not have water? Were they not demanding it?
Bello wanted to do a qualitative study of the areas that had not received water. She selected study sites that were either supported by UNICEF or by the World-Bank-funded Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF). These were chosen because they have worked in the rural areas of the country for a long time. Also, they have a demand-driven approach to development.
The remote areas lose
Bello says: “In Katchakhwala I asked ‘Have you made a request to the government?’ They said they had but that no Member of Parliament had ever visited them because the politicians only went where they had supporters.”
It’s political who gets water and who does not. Bello claims that some Members of Parliament make sure boreholes are located in areas where they have affiliates, while development agencies set up boreholes close to the road so it will be easy to show foreign visitors. People living in very remote areas simply do not get any boreholes.
Bello claims: “I asked UNICEF officials which criteria they were using. I only got the answer that they wanted to ‘see an impact’. I asked ‘So, if you had drilled on the other side, there would not have been an impact?’ I didn’t get an answer.”
How should the water situation be improved? Bello has some suggestions:
“There should be a data bank which shows not only how many boreholes there are, but also where they are located. Secondly, the coordination between the different service providers must improve and, thirdly, politics and development should be separated.”
Widened understanding
Bello will graduate with a Master’s degree in political science in July 2011.
She reveals: “The research part of the degree has widened my understanding of issues and how to have a problem-solving approach. In my job as a land district officer in local government I work with settling land disputes. What I have learnt through this Master’s will help me a lot."
But there were challenges while conducting the research. Although the monthly NOMA scholarship was sufficient during the course-work, it did not cover expenses in connection with the research.
Bello says: “I had to walk long distances to get to gather data and my husband had to take time off from work to escort me to some of the most remote areas.”
Important support
Bello always wanted to continue with her education, she had just not found out how after taking a bachelor’s degree in public administration and starting her job in local government in 2004. She was married, had two small children and was expecting a third when she saw an advertisement about the NOMA-programme in a newspaper.
ENCOURAGING WOMEN: Head of the NOMA-programme at the University of Malawi, Dr. Asiyati Chiweza, hopes to attract more female students in the future. “There are a lot of bright women in Malawi, but they don’t have the opportunity,” she says.
She was unsure of what to do. On the one hand, this could be her great chance. On the other, how would she possibly cope?
“The head of the NOMA-programme, Dr. Asiyati Chiweza, told me it was possible. I just had to work hard and it would be fine. If it weren’t for her understanding and telling me I could do it, I would never have tried.
“Dr. Chiweza talked to me like a mother. She has been so supportive.”
Bello is one of six female students in the 20-strong second cohort of the NOMA programme. In the first year there were only two women. The initial goal was 50 per cent but, Dr. Chiweza says, this was impossible, as the pool to recruit from is limited. Only 20 to 30 per cent of the students at the university are female and, when on top of that you are supposed to have work-experience, it makes it far more difficult to recruit women, as most at this stage are married and have many responsibilities at home.
Dr. Chiweza is happy to say that all the female candidates have done very well. She has made sure the studies are flexible so it would be possible for instance to have a baby, like Bello did, without getting behind in the studies.
Gender award
Dr Chiweza says: “We have all these beautiful strategies on gender issues in Malawi but they don’t fully translate into real life. I talked to the male lecturers on the programme to allow flexible arrangements for the female students and they were very understanding. We have to take practical steps to improve the situation of women, and we are trying to create that environment here at the university.”
To attract more female students, a work-experience waiver is offered to women, plus two selected students receive a gender award of 60,000 kwacha (approx. $400US) for them to specialise in a gender issue. The candidates are chosen after submitting their proposals in a seminar. Dr. Chiweza says the goal is to create an awareness of political science amongst women and encourage the study of gender issues in Malawi.
The selected students are then encouraged to publish an academic paper in cooperation with their supervisor on the basis of the Master thesis.
“I realised that in Malawi, as a lady, if you want to achieve you have to be on top of things,” Dr. Chiweza says.
“You can have the will and the interest, but you need to have the opportunity as well.”
Collaboration with Norway
The Master’s degree in political science is a collaborative project with the University of Bergen, Norway. The programme grew out of a previous NUFU-collaboration between the Centre for Social Research at the University of Malawi, the University of Bergen and the Christian Michelsen Institute, also located in Bergen.
“A key outcome of the NUFU-collaboration was the first textbook on political science in Malawi. As we were winding up the research, we talked about the need to address democratisation and governance issues in key institutions in the country, and we started talking about a Master’s degree in political science,” Dr Chiweza says.
The NOMA-programme seeks to attract applicants from the public and the civil society sectors, and, when the first cohort of students started in 2007, students came from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Anti-Corruption Bureau, media institutions, local government and civil society organisations.
“We had one student who was a Member of Parliament, who discontinued, but the 19 others have now finished,” Dr. Chiweza says.
The 20 students in the second cohort are all on schedule.
Third cohort
Dr. Chiweza says that the programme has already started receiving applications for the third cohort – the first one not being supported by NOMA. These students will not receive a scholarship and will have to pay a fee to attend the programme.
“I don’t think the fees will affect the number of applicants. Often the workplace will pay the fees and we also have flexible payments arrangements at the university.”
Dr. Chiweza says that one of the main challenges has been a lack of infrastructure.
“The university was built for undergraduate studies only. Now we have more undergraduates and, on top of that, postgraduate students. There are not enough classrooms or computer labs. Initially we also had a staffing problem but now we are expecting two more lecturers. Meanwhile, two Master graduates have been holding lectures,” she says.
Emma Bello could be one of the staff in the future. She wants to continue with a PhD but, right now, she has enough with raising three small children. She does not want to move out of Malawi.
“I need to be here and assist the rural people of Malawi,” she says.