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“As you can see, the cattle are drinking water from the same pit as us. Their urine is right there… it’s not very healthy,” she said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Zimbabwe also has food shortages, with 7.7 million people facing hunger. In Muzi, the number of households with access to adequate quantities of cheap, nutritious food has more than halved compared with previous years, local health authorities said.
Children have been particularly affected – the number of children admitted to hospitals for moderate to severe malnutrition has doubled since June.
The village feeding program is working to address this problem. Once a week, women from the community come together, bring whatever produce they have, and serve porridge to children under five.
Grated baobab fruit, peanut butter, milk and Stir leafy greens into your porridge to add extra nutrition.
But the list of ingredients is shrinking every week – cowpeas and beans have recently become out of stock due to poor harvests.
With support from partners including UNICEF, the government designed a village feeding programme that runs at least three times a week.
“But due to the drought caused by El Nino, we are now only able to carry out vaccinations once a week,” explained Kudzai Madamombe, the Muzi district medical officer.
“Due to the lack of rain, we have suffered 100 percent loss in all our crops,” he added, saying the programme might be forced to stop completely next month due to dwindling food stocks.
Mr Madamambe said clinics providing vital health services to Zimbabweans in the Muzi area had also been affected – the borehole that supplies water to a quarter of the clinics in the area had gone dry.
The region’s main dam has only one month’s supply of water left.
As a result, vegetable irrigation schemes, including one to support 200 local farmers, have been suspended.
There is suffering everywhere, said Tambudzai Mahachi, 36, who grows acres of corn, cowpeas and peanuts on her land.
Despite her efforts, she had nothing to show for it, not even a plate of food. Even her tough baobab tree produced almost no fruit.
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