The Sunday News
Nkosilathi Sibanda, Sunday News Correspondent
EVERYDAY life for children of school going age living in villages adjacent the wide expanse of the Hwange National Park is best described as one of hell in the middle of plenty.
It has been six months seated at home, for the thousands of pupils, as schools are closed. At least they do not have to walk long distances to school, breaking sleep at the biting cold of dawn to return home sun scorched and hungry.
The situation has reached deprivation levels for school children at the four villages of Mabale, Dopota, Lupote and Siyanyanga. Pupils were used to having free lunch courtesy of Sabona Trust, a social development organisation that has for years committed to support feeding projects at school.
For a Grade Three pupil who has walked 16 kilometres to school, the scare of encountering wild animals along the way is far less than that of spending a day on an empty stomach. An increase in food shortages at household level in Hwange and other dry districts in the country has caused massive school dropouts, studies show. This prompted the Government to partner with NGOs such as Sabona Trust to implement schools feeding programmes (SFPs) as a hunger mitigation measure.
The move, as teachers, parents and Ministry Primary and Secondary Education attest, has motivated vulnerable children to attend school.
Food handouts, break time and lunchtime meals also improved lesson comprehension and performance at national examinations, as revealed Sabona Trust programmes coordinator Mr Munyaradzi Nyamande in an interview with Sunday News at a food distribution assembly in Hwange on Tuesday last week.
Rural schools in Hwange continue to record below 50 percent pass rates at Zimbabwe School Examinations Council public examinations.
Teachers in Hwange district said children are either dropping out or so hungry that they fail to concentrate or faint during lessons.
This time of the year, from July to November, deprivation is at its highest level in the villages of Dapota, Lupote, Siyanyanga and Mabale.
Hunger takes a toll on school children and it is endemic. The four villages are the heart of the passage often used by wildlife as they parade in search of food and water. When the Covid-19 induced closure of lessons came about, it spelt disaster to the kids. No school, no good food.
Covid-19 laid bare the dire effects drought has on education. Insufficient household food security in the area brought toil to children whose nutrition and survival is forced to scrap for the little crumbs available. Having noted the increased plight, organisations such as Sabona Trust have for years run feeding programmes at schools found at Mabale, Dopota, Lupote and Siyanyanga.
Over 1 300 children from four primary schools in the area received food humpers courtesy of Sabona Trust.
A sigh of relief filled parents, village heads, headman and children as they wept, seeing truckloads of food stuff offloaded at a distribution point at Mabale.
Homesteads in the area are a sorry sight. Fields are parched, sandy with nothing but dangling maize stalks from the previous harvest.
Nothing was plated in the 2019/20 season. Hwange like many districts in Matabeleland North received below normal rainfalls. Only a combined 30 millilitres of rainfall was recorded, according to the Meteorological Services Department. That was not even enough to grow millet, a cereal that best thrives on such an area.
The number of rural homes without enough food in the most drought affected areas has gone up to nearly 79 percent in August, as the World Food Programme reports. Hwange has the highest number of households just consuming one meal a day, according to Caritas Zimbabwe, a non-governmental organisation operating in the district. Mr Nyamande said with no reliable food stocks, schools around Hwange district had to survive on food handouts.
“The closure of schools due to Covid-19 increased the burden at homes. To get two meals a day was a struggle. We gathered information as Sabona Trust that children that used to be fed at school were now vulnerable. We intervened by parceling out an assortment of goodies to keep them going even if school is closed,” he said.
Each child under the scheme was given a hamper which consisted of a 10 kilogramme bag of mealie meal, 1kg sugar beans, 1kg soya chunks, 1 litre cooking oil, 1 kg washing soap and a 500g salt sachet. Village elders said they had lost hope of how they were to feed well their children in wake of hunger that faced many families.
Councillor for Ward 17 in Mabale, Mr Joseph Bonda said school children had adapted to going for days without proper meals.
“The intervention by Sabona Trust has come at a time when school children who normally are fed by the organisation at school were no longer accessing the daily meals due to closure caused by Covid 19”, said Bonda.
One of the parents, Ms Mary Mupambawashe said timely gestures by Sabona Trust have saved and healed the community.
“In our area of Mabale we had lost all hope. It pains to see your children go hungry and you cannot do anything.
“We are not only grateful to Sabona Trust but a whole lot of organisations that have helped us provide a better future. They have been a great pillar of strength in encouraging our children to love school, despite the hardships and unavailability of food in many homes, said Ms Mupambawashe as she received provisions for her nine children.
Commenting on the food distribution, Mrs Sailota Chagadama, the Sabona Trust board secretary said the organisation through its partners and sponsors in Norway was committed to ensuring that school going children were fed despite the Corona pandemic which has disrupted learning across the country and the world at large.
“We sought to continue supporting the children despite school closure because we understand that most households are struggling with food security”, she said.
The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education in its part, has been praised for extending a hand to work to independent institutions in alleviating hunger in schools. The Government saw the schools feeding programme as an essential public-private partnership that fosters food and nutrition security. Vice President Kembo Mohadi is on record that school feeding schemes are crucial for development.
“School feeding is an essential tool for development which Zimbabwe considers as an investment in a special context, other than merely attracting learners to school. We need to bear in mind that failure to invest in food and nutrition security, particularly for children, would retard the development of our countries in socio-economic terms,” said the Vice President on the occasion of an School Feeding Programme in Harare last year.
Most community members in Hwange rely on small scale farming while others were employed in the Safari lodges around the areas. The closure of most tourism facilities due to Covid-19 greatly affected the community’s source of income.
Nyamande said they will go full scale into resuming assistance as the Government announced the opening of school next week. For the teachers and the community, the hope remains that in the face of starvation, children will be encouraged to soldier on and write their examinations. Food handouts and regular feeding on site at schools was seen as the solution to curb absenteeism.
“As schools open, we anticipate that some children won’t come to school, but we are hopeful that such food handouts brought by Sabona Trust will make a change,” said Mr Kennedy Jiyane, a teacher at one school in Lupote.
