| Chipulukusu |
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Chipulukusu is the largest township in Ndola, with about 65,000 people living without any city planning, amenities and utilities. Most houses are built out of whatever the people can find, like sun-hardened earth brick, or any type of lumber they can find to use as construction material, 
roofs are built with scavenged (or stolen) metal roof-sheets held down with rocks.
During the rainy season (monsoon) these structures break down with rain washing away walls, running under the roof sheets and flooding the homes. High winds usually blow away the roofs altogether. And as there is no drainage system, the rain forms rivers that rush through the township eroding everything in their path. Water is provided by an occasional hand pump scattered throughout the township. Some of the houses have holes dug in the ground to catch the groundwater by lowering a plastic bottle on a string to catch water. The sanitation consists of nothing more than a pit in the ground with some type of structure built around it for privacy. These also contaminate the water source as the refuse seeps down to the ground water and often also overflow during the rainy season and collapse due to erosion. Most of the households in Chipulukusu are headed by unemployed or retired workers, many of whom cannot afford to send their children to school. Also a sizable number of the population are unemployed widows looking after fatherless children and are therefore unable to raise the money to send the children to school. The people of Chipulukusu survive simply in any way possible. Some are lucky enough to have a job working in Ndola, some grow vegetables wherever they find a plot to plant, and sell on the streets in Ndola. And some are able to work as blacksmiths or as carpenters. However they are lucky to make more than a dollar a day to live on. Crime and drug addiction is rampant and makes Chipulukusu one of the most dangerous townships to live in. A truckload of molasses, normally used for animal feed, but illegally converted into a very addictive beer called "Kachasu", is destroying many lives in the township of Chipulukusu. It is illegal but the prevention to stop the production is not enforced by the police. |
| Last Updated ( Friday, 03 October 2008 18:13 ) |