By James Mwale
Lilongwe, Mana: Ndaziona (not real name) of Mazinga village Traditional Authority Chiseka in Lilongwe has lived with mental illness since she was 11, according to Nesiya Magalasi, her mother.
Magalasi is a mother of 11 children but she lost nine of them. She now only has Ndaziona and her brother Mailosi.
Magalasi, who doesn’t recall her year of birth though a rough guess places her in late 70s or early 80s, believes that Ndaziona’s fate originated from a dispute over family land which their long gone ascendants left for them.
Whether Magalasi’s narrative of bewitchment is worth buying or not, one fact remains: Ndaziona’s condition has, over the years, taken toll not just on her but on Magalasi the mother as well.
“One day after relapsing into one of her episodes, Ndaziona left home without notifying anyone and came back about 14 months later.
She was pregnant and she could not tell who was responsible and we did not know how far along she was,” explains Namanjasi, a long time neighbour, friend and sympathizer of Ndaziona’s mother.
Ndaziona gave birth to her first son some five months later and this has since been the trend as she falls prey to morally unhinged men who take advantage of her condition to exploit her sexually.
“She has had episodes of leaving home and returning pregnant, and she left behind four fatherless children when she went missing for about two years to return pregnant again with her fifth child,” explains Namanjasi.
It is Ndaziona’s mother, Magalasi, who, in her old age, is burdened with raising all her five grandchildren.
With no source of income, and physically too worn out to till land for a living, the old lady has been reduced to a charity case, surviving on hand-to-mouth livelihood supported by well-wishing neighbours and village people.
Her son Mailosi, Ndaziona’s brother, and his wife, who survive on piecework in farm gardens of well-to-do neighbours comes to the rescue of Magalasi, at times.
However, Mailosi’s little earning is barely enough to always extend to the mother while feeding his family of six children at the same time.
Sometimes well-wishers volunteer to till what is left of her backyard while others contribute a little monitory donation for fertilizer.
Despite the intervention, the backyard produces a maximum of 60kg of maize – barely enough to sustain her through.
Magalasi also has to walk long distances with her bent back to draw water and fetch firewood when noone is around to help. Sometimes she even travels longer distances to acquire maize-milling services.
“Most of the time I’m too tired to cook for the kids and I’m usually caught between stretching myself to breaking point to feed them or relax and starve them to death,” explains Magalasi, a troubled look on her weary face.
She further complains that she is, on most nights, deprived of sleep because when Ndaziona returns home from the markets where she spends her days, she is always making noise and throwing verbal insults at her mother.
Ndaziona, sometimes, threatens to beat her mother up.
Namanjasi further explains that when in her aggressive episodes, Ndaziona physically assaults her children as well, threatening to kill them.
“She sometimes grabs her youngest child by the neck and spins him around threatening to throw him away in the bushes. And she is mostly uncontrollable when in such a state,” Namanjasi explains.
Ndaziona’s predicament further extends to her children. With no-one to call dad and being supported by a fragile granny who can barely stand on her two feet, their early childhood development process is highly compromised.
The eldest (name withheld) can barely concentrate in school because he is under constant verbal attack from his peers about his mother’s condition. They sometimes mock him about how she is under constant sexual abuse.
According to Magalasi, Ndaziona’s sexual exploiters have, lately, improvised creative strategies of meeting their ends without getting her pregnant. They persuade her with money and convince her into taking contraceptive pills.
“She has also been tricked into practicing backstreet abortions before, and she has now turned it into a habit when the contraceptive pills fail and she accidentally falls pregnant,” explains Magalasi.
Much as only God knows the destiny of the hopeless lives of Ndaziona, Magalasi and the five children, their predicament is only a snapshot representing a multitude countrywide struggling with impacts of unattended-to mental conditions.
Government has programmes such as Orphan and Vulnerable Child Care, Institutional Care, and Foster Care which are designed to adress such cases but as District Social Welfare Officer for Lilongwe, Derrick Mwenda explains, his office is highly underfunded to effectively and efficiently deliver its services.
He says most cases go unattended to due to community members’ lack of knowledge on how they can access available social welfare services. He also says Community Child Protection Workers fail to reach out to many with awareness and sensitisation campaigns due to long distances and lack of transportation.
“As for this case, best would be to withdraw the (five) children from the community and take them into child protection homes under the care of foster parents. As for the old lady, our office places such cases under Social Cash Transfer,” explains Mwenda.
He further admits: “We register such cases of sexual exploitation against people with acute mental illness and it is worrisome that the cases keep increasing in the district.”
