WHEN Zonobia Tembo, a 30 year old mother of four children, heard that her youngest child had a medical condition that could be likened to cerebral palsy, her world started to crumble.
The news of the condition, a congenital disorder of movement, muscle tone or posture was sure to ruin her marriage. Her husband blamed her for their son’s disability to an extent that he had to chase her out of their matrimonial house.
Ms Tembo now lives in Katete’s Sitolo village, in Chieftainess Kawaza’s area. She moved back to her mother’s house, together with all her four children.
“My husband shunned me and our son for being disabled, he never tried to provide for him and even refused to be involved in anything to do with him,” says Ms Tembo.
Her other three children are okay.
Cerebral palsy is mainly caused by abnormal brain development, often before birth. Symptoms include exaggerated reflexes, floppy or rigid limbs and involuntary motions, these appear by early childhood.
“He [the child] was born in 2017. First, he started by having fits, and when I took him to St. Francis Hospital, I was told that the child had malnutrition which may have started from the time he was in the womb. They said that I wasn’t feeding him as much while he was in the womb,” she said.
Ms Tembo explains that she was in an abusive marriage and it had taken a toll on her. Because of the torture and torment, she would sometimes skip meals due to loss of appetite that may have been induced by emotional stress.
“I believe that is what contributed to my child to be born the way he was born. I used to have a lot of challenges eating when I was pregnant. You know, sometimes you lose your appetite when you have a lot of things going on in your life. It was difficult for me in that marriage,” she says.
She was married for close to eight years to the man whose details she is not so keen on revealing.
Her son, who was born in 2017, will soon be turning five years old. Despite his age, he still cannot walk, speak or sit independently.
“After a lot of back and forth visits to the hospital, I was then later told that he has a brain problem,” she said.
She loves him anyway; he is her child after all. “There is nothing I can do. I have been receiving some help here and there, and at least, he is learning to sit independently now,” she says.
Her mother Innocensia Phiri says ever since her daughter was chased from her marriage for giving birth to a disabled child, her life has not been easy – not even in her mother’s community.
She says she has, on many occasions, had to deal with discrimination from members of the community, something she never imagined would happen.
“She’s been here for over two years now. She is my daughter and there is nothing I can do but accept her back,” she says.
Ms Phiri says throughout her daughters’ marriage, reports of her being abused used to reach her - but in many instances, like most parents do, she would just encourage her daughter to be strong and that in any marriage there are challenges.
She somehow feels guilty of every wrong thing that has happened to her daughter.
She says: “Perhaps, I should have listened to her when she complained the first time about what was happening in her house. Maybe that is the mistake I made and I know a lot of parents out there do the same.”
Ms Phiri acknowledges that raising a differently abled child in a rural area is difficult.
“It’s just that some of us have a little understanding of some of these things, otherwise, if it were in another community, maybe they could even have thrown away the child. We have heard of such things,” she says.
Through the integrated nutrition and smallholder support project which is supported by the World Food Programme (WFP) and Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), DAPP, as an implementing partner, is building the capacity of locals in the production and consumption of nutritious foods through an integrated multi sectoral approach.
Liato Kashweka is DAPP project monitoring and evaluation officer in Katete. He says the district has a lot of children who are not doing well in terms of nutrition.
“…and in order to tackle it adequately, we ride on the 1,000 most critical days – and that is how we have been helping these people here and in all the other districts we are implementing this project,” he says.
And in order to prevent starvation of fetuses such as the case of Ms Tembo’s child, Mr Kashweka says DAPP has also been organising cooking demonstrations for pregnant and lactating women where they are taught how to prepare nutritious homegrown foods.
WFP Zambia Deputy Country Director Ms Jayoung Lee says her organisation recognises the nutrition challenges in the country and has in partnership with various stakeholders been supporting the Government’s nutrition improvement agenda.
“WFP has been complementing national efforts in addressing nutrition challenges by promoting the production and consumption of locally-available nutritious foods, targeting vulnerable populations including pregnant and lactating women, adolescent girls, children and smallholder farmers,” she says.
Ms Lee adds that WFP provides technical assistance to the Government in generating evidence on nutrition and in integrating nutrition components across national programmes to ensure they are nutrition sensitive.
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