WOMEN AND WATER IN MALAWI. An Ill-suited Couple

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For the first time in nine years, Agnes Wilson (left) is back to the place where a crocodile attacked her while fetching water, in the Shire River, in Chinduzi, a rural area in Machinga District.
In 1999, while she was sinking the bucket in the river to get some water –something she had done a million times– a crocodile bit her right hand. "I tohught it was the end of my life, since I tried to fight it but it was much stronger than me", she remembers, still with a glimpse of fear in her face. She faint and woke up in the hospital, terrified by what she saw in her hand: "It had been almost removed, and I needed three surgeries to get it fixed back". Since then her life has never been the same since she's now disabled. Nowadays Agnes has a tap at her place, provided by NGO Water Aid, but it is not working since october 2007, so she fetches water from a borehole digged by some villagers. "I am afraid. I never went back to the river to fetch water, nor to do anything else", she says.