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| Features |
| The aqueducts of Chingale |
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by
Joseph-Claude Simwaka, 08 November 2006
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01:59:23
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You may have seen or heard about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Grand Canyon of America, the Pyramids of Egypt the Aqueducts of Rome and some other weird structures that form the Seven Wonders of the World and marvelled at what ingenuity people of yore and mother nature had in order to come up with such awe-inspiring creations in their age and time.
In this computer age a lot has happened and still happening in technology and any imaginable thing seems possible at a touch of a button.
But to most people in rural Malawi computers are like fairy-tales. Few have ever set eyes on the modern day gadget that is capable of doing almost anything its user wants it to do at a touch of a button.
Computers or no computers, modern technology or no technology, people of Chingale in Zomba, driven by the urge to beat one of the most dreaded enemies of their time in the name of hunger, have devised what looks like a crude but very efficient irrigation method which can as well pass as an “Eighth Wonder of the World”.
Seeing is believing, so goes an age old saying, and indeed it will take one to go to Chingale—whether on foot, by car or bicycle taxi—to appreciate the determination of the people and to what extent they will go to wipe out hunger from their midst, which has been haunting them for many years.
Today the clarion call to every farmer worth his or her salt is to embrace irrigation as the best means to fight and banish the woes of hunger once and for all. And people of Chingale, with support from World Vision Malawi, are engaged in a unique irrigation programme whose simplicity and efficiency would today puzzle ancient Egyptians and beat them at their own game, if the green maize gardens and hanging aqueducts are anything to go by.
Most donor-funded programmes fail to yield further results when money stops flowing in. People of Chingale are not oblivious of this fact hence they have geared themselves to ensure that, come rain come sunshine, the irrigation project they have embarked on will be sustained as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
They use locally found cost-free and cheap materials such as bamboos and plastic paper for making their aqueducts (or conveyer bridges as they are called here) which distribute irrigation water from inlets at the western foot of Zomba Mountain, across streams and into canals that eventually end up in either fish ponds or farmers’ gardens.
“We thought of coming up with a cheap, simple and easy to maintain system of tapping water from the source and thought steal or plastic pipes would not be ideal for us once donors leave. So we devised this technology, with the help of World Vision, to weave conveyor bridges covered with plastic paper to carry water down to our maize fields,” says Paulo Alfred, who only joined the bandwagon this year after turning green with envy as he all along watched fellow farmers prosper from the scheme.
Alfred is about to harvest his first crop of maize which at the time of this interview was just ripening on a 0.5 ha piece of land.
The whole scenario is a puzzle but who cares as long as people there no longer remember how it feels to be hungry!
What started as a small sprinkler irrigation scheme in 2000 using motorised water pumps covering 12 ha to help farmers in Kalizinje, Mlowoka1 & 2 villages, to ensure food security by being involved in seed multiplication for sale, is today a vast expanse of knee-high, tussling, ripening or ready for harvesting maize covering 650 ha with a membership of 2,059 members from 44 farmer clubs in the area.
Says Andrew Khaoreya, World Vision’s Development Facilitator for Chingale Area Development Programme: “Gone are the days when people of this area dependent on rain-fed water for their crops. Today, everyone is talking of irrigation and as you can see, it is irrigation everywhere here.”
Khaoreya says after noticing that most farmers were in the end feeding on the maize that was meant for seed multiplication, his organisation came up with the idea of expanding the irrigation scheme involving the local communities themselves so that they could venture into winter-cropping.
“People here were hitherto dependent on rain-fed agriculture but the area has been experiencing unreliable rainfall being a rain shadow area and often times hunger was the order of the day. But we are blessed with perennial streams so we decided to start low-cost irrigation using locally available resources like bamboos, poles, grass and plastic paper.
“Today we boast eight conveyor bridges built with local materials and using this simple technology we are able to irrigate 650 ha of land on which 2,059 households of which 52 percent are women grow winter crops enabling them to harvest at least three times a year,” Khaoreya says. Who would not pat oneself on the back for such a feat?
Farmer Tereza Moyenda, a mother of eight, started farming of this nature in 1998 and today is a living testimony of how irrigation can transform and empower local communities into food self-sufficiency and to lead an economically stable life.
She sums up: “I have built two decent houses—one for me and my wife and the other for our children. I have nine goats; many Mikolongwe (Black Australorp) chickens; I am able to send my children to private schools; and during lean periods I have enough food even to share or sell to those in need. What more can a villager want?”
Moyenda, like many other farmers in Chingale who have embraced irrigation like a religion, may not be comparatively rich by any standards but is happy to go to bed on a full stomach everyday. She has a roof over her head that does not leak when it rains and can afford good clothing thanks to Chingale’s “eighth wonder of the world”.
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