ZAMBIA: Dark side to tourist mecca

Both Zimbabwe and Zambia have adopted the Victoria Falls as their prime tourist attraction in their countries. And while the two towns on their respective sides of the Zimbabwean / Zambian border (Victoria Falls and Livingston) used to be dusty, sleepy colonial towns, Victoria Falls certainly has become a vibrant colorful tourist mecca.

And though Livingston on the Zambian side is in no ways comparable to its Zimbabwean "counterpart", 2 brand new luxury hotels have only recently opened their doors. Mainly attracting South African and overseas fly-in tourists, dishes in the restaurant range from crocodile and kudu to ostrich and impala. Exotic drinks on the wooden terrace overlooking the Zambezi River at the Royal Livingston make for the ideal setting for a romantic sundowner - if, and that is the catch- one can afford to pay in US Dollars.

While most tourists enjoying the mighty Victoria Falls, bungi-jumping, wildlife safaris and a tranquil, scenic river cruise, reality in Zambia is dramatically different from that. About a 2 hours drive away from the Falls and the eyes of most tourists is Choma, a small rural town in the middle of nowhere. Choma is in the heart of Zambia's Southern Province, the very province hardest hit by drought and hunger in Zambia.

Since 1991, the Southern Province has experienced on-going food shortages, little or no rains alternating with floods. The rural economy of the entire province relies heavily on agricultural activities and every time people here have hope for a recovery, another disaster hits. The latest droughts though have dashed hopes of any recovery and that, combined with animal illnesses, has brought agriculture here down to its knees.

Cattle, goats and other domesticated animals are dying on a large scale, while the drought prevents the production of other food that could be sold on the markets. With no more viable sources of income, villagers can not afford to go to local shops to purchase their maize meal, which is, in contrast to other Southern African nations, still freely available. However, like everywhere else in Southern Africa, prices for the staple food maize/corn/mielies, have increased by more than 200 per cent in the last year and is therefore now out of reach for most Zambians.

In the Southern Province's Choma, Monze and Mazabuka districts, World Vision Zambia is the implementing partner for WFP's ( World Food Programme) food distribution. Though distribution only started recently after the declaration of a national food disaster by the Zambian Government in May, thousands of the most vulnerable like children, blind people and the elderly, have already received their first food.

Every registered needy person is currently receiving 350g of maize kernels per day, which is still much more than the average villager not in the programme, namely one meal every second or third day. Hand in hand with the hunger and the generally poor state of nutrition, goes the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the country. People throughout the Southern Province are extremely vulnerable and more and more women therefore resort to prostitution as the only way of survival.

At the Sikalongo Health Centre in Choma district some 35 km away from Choma, World Vision was busy distributing food to mothers with young children, the sick and elderly when I was visiting. In the large crowd waiting to receive maize is 68-year-old Noah Siteleki who has lived all his life in the Choma district. "The situation", he tells me, "had never been as bad as at the moment:". With a small fruit in his hands, 2 by 3 centimeters in diameter, he explains that villagers have resorted to drying and grinding the wild fruit to produce something vaguely similar to flour. Though not tasty and as rich as maize meal, Noah and thousands of others here relied for weeks on the fruit that seems to have no English name.

The Governor of the Zambian Reserve Bank has meanwhile gone public with an estimated crop shortage of 630 000 metric tons for this year. And should the shortage be indeed that large, as many as 4 million Zambians or almost half of the population could face starvation later in the year.