Jamataka grapples with village status

Ryder Gabathuse
Staff Writer | Monday March 28, 2011 00:00

 

It is even worse during the rainy season as she has to battle with her rusty wheelbarrow through the wet black cotton soil. In the newly recognised Jamataka village, Moses, who originally hails from Mathangwane in the Tutume Sub-District, pushes her wheelbarrow about six kilometres to fetch water from one of the two standpipes in the village. Women her age living in major villages, towns and cities have easy access to potable water.

As the world commemorated World Water Day last week, Moses and other villagers in Jamataka still have a lot of challenges to grapple with. The lid of her container cannot tighten and as such, water leaks into the wheelbarrow.

She pushes her wheelbarrow energetically and with a lot of gusto barefooted in the black cement-like dust. The colour of her black trousers is gradually fading perhaps, due to incessant exposure to dust. Her son cries and the single mother of three is forced to load him onto the wheelbarrow.

That is when the half-naked handsome boy manages a smile as he accidentally lands on two packets of powdered Mnati brew the mother has carried. The 30-year-old unemployed Moses survives by baking and selling bread and brewing and selling Mnati traditional beer albeit on a small scale. Readymade Mnati powder is mixed with water to make sorghum beer, which looks like Chibuku. Moses mostly sells her liquor to the villagers hired on the government drought relief programme, commonly known as Namola-Leuba.

Her newly allocated plot lies north of the village and is a bit outside Jamataka forcing her to travel some distance daily to access water and other services. However, she has hope following a briefing by council officials that potable water would soon be reticulated to individual plots. Her assessment of the transformation of Jamataka, from an un-gazetted settlement with a handful of people, to an official village is of a dwelling moving slowly to catch up with development. In the past, water used to be bowsed to the village by council tankers. Moses completed her Junior Certificate Examinations at  Mmei Community Junior Secondary School in 1998 and has been jobless since. 'I got a third class pass and it has been difficult in the job market,' she says.

When her peers relocated to Francistown and other areas in search of opportunities, she decided to remain home hoping that she will make it. 'It has been a struggle. However, I hope that one day, there will be many people here,' she says. The many people coming in to settle will provide the market for her products, she hopes. She says the best jobs for the villagers are working as housemaids and herdsmen. Just near the village Kgotla, there is a standpipe where the residents, living west of Jamataka, fetch water. Another standpipe is at the eastern end.

The village standpipes are centres of gatherings, where people hang around to discuss the latest village gossip.

Multi-coloured water containers make up a long queue, from the standpipe with donkey carts waiting to transport water home. Previous land allocations were done haphazardly and the Land Board has a huge task of ensuring that they fill up gaps created by the old order. Some people have abandoned their mud huts and this makes the area unkempt.

The decaying woodwork and mud cuts a sorry image of filthiness. Loud noise blurs from the gumba gumba music system as people socialise on weekends in one of the drinking holes. Village chief, Gaebolae Goitseone has joined his people to socialise. 'It's mid month and villagers have no choice and settle for anything that can wet their throats as majority of them do not have money,' he says.

He says the village is growing at a reasonable pace. He says Jamataka is named after a pool of rainwater lying somewhere east of the village. This is at the old Jamataka from where people relocated to near the tarred road to Orapa/Letlhakane mining towns. A majority of the settlers at the village originated from Tutume, Sebina, Nshakazhogwe and Marobela. They are either Bakalanga or Basarwa. Jamataka pool used to contain a lot of rainwater with cattleposts surrounding the village. Cattle barons from areas mainly in the north eastern parts of the country rear their cattle around Jamataka. This group once challenged the existence of Jamataka settlement at the Francistown High Court wanting to have the villagers relocated so they could extend their grazing fields.

The villagers, represented by the late attorney Phazha Kgalemang, won the case. Former cabinet minister, and one of the sons of Jamataka, the late Baledzi Gaolathe, played a prominent role in ensuring the settlement became a village. Although Jamataka looks like a hopeless area for job hunters, Goitseone says opportunities for drought relief programmes of Namola Leuba, and Ipelegeng are better than nothing.

That means many youth from the village have migrated to Gaborone or Francistown to look for greener pastures.

The village chief is however worried that the young and able-bodied youth have a tendency of not developing their village especially those who have good jobs.

'They must come and build better houses here and rid us of this image of mud huts thatched with either grass or zinc,' he says. Jamataka's bad roads mean the dominant mode of transport is the donkey or the bicycle.