By Tiphana Chipala Kawiyo
(For myopic Nyasa Tribesmen)
An engineering tale is told of two water droplets meeting at Lumbadzi Bridge on the boundary between Lilongwe and Dowa Districts on the Salima-Lilongwe Road. One is a river droplet in Lumbadzi River travelling freely towards the Lake from Lilongwe by gravity. The other is a piped water droplet being forced up Chiwere Hills to Kaphirimtiwa, the Capital from the Lake in Salima. As they cross each other at the middle of the bridge, they wave to each other, one going down while the other reluctantly going up. “Hallo my friend”, says the river droplet. Why are you going up the hills to Kaphirimtiwa, the capital? I thought you just came from there.
Says the piped droplet, I am told I am needed in the capital, there is no water for the residents. Is that so saying the river droplet, but I am coming from there just now. There is a torrent in the city and it’s flooding! Biwi, Mtandire and Mgona are under water as we speak. People have lost lives and property because of too much water in the city! Who says there is no water in the city? Must be some busy bodies out to make a quick buck I suppose. Replies the river droplet, but they should have caught us before we reached the lake. Poor you, now travelling back to Kaphirimtiwa where you originally came from high up in Dzalanyama Mountains. Madness. Misala. Illogical.
Humans I fail to understand them. Here they are busy taking water droplets all the way from the Lake at high cost instead of impounding us closer to Kaphirimtiwa, the Capital at lower cost. They claim there are no sites for impounding us there. But we know this is not true. There is upper and lower Diamphwe. There is lower Lilongwe near Kamuzu Palace. There is Namitete. There is Linthipe. And we have the whole Dzalanyama Mountains as our natural water tower much better than Futa Jalon Mountains, the water tower of West Africa!
We droplets could easily be transferred inter-basin from Nankhaka, Lumbadzi and Lingadzi then stored at lower Lilongwe River site or lower Lumbadziand Kaphirimtiwa, the capital would have all the water she needs. The same could be done with Lifidzi, Linthipe and Diamphwe. All this at a much cheaper cost. And this is no news to humans, but they never listen and learn. Bwampini, the infamous king of rodents and the madimba trench engineer of Linkhuwe, once told them: “This is a white elephant. It’s a shame. Myopia. Ignorencia. End of Tale.
DLK0821MC58. Copyright Tiphana Chipala Kawiyo (2020). All rights reserved.
