Margaret Lubinda

Imagine navigating your entire life without one of your senses or without the full use of your body not in a world built for you, but in one that constantly overlooks your needs.  Now imagine facing that reality during a water crisis.

In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, the taps are often dry, the pipes are cracked, and access to safe water is uncertain. For many, it’s an inconvenience, but for people with disabilities, it’s a daily struggle for survival marked by courage, adaptation, and quiet victories. This is not a story of helplessness, this is a story of strength, dignity, survival and resilience.

Khathazile Mathonsi, a 63-year-old blind mother and grandmother, lives a life shaped by touch, sound, and deep memory. Her hands move with precision folding laundry, checking boiling pots, drying vegetables on her rooftop. Each movement reflects years of experience, not dependence. She laughs at others’ impatience with her pace and says, “This world may be dark to me, but it’s mine and I live it fully.”

Aleck Manyepo, also visually impaired, is a tailor who has raised six children through his craft. Water is essential to his work used to wash foam and clean fabrics but the city’s unreliable supply forces him to fetch water from unsafe places, where burst pipes leak into potholes. Still, he adapts; his sewing machine hums daily, not just as a tool, but as a symbol of his persistence.

Oppah Ndlovu (63), has lived in a wheelchair since childhood, following a battle with polio. She lives alone, and while her home is fitted with taps, water rarely flows. Her life, however, is not defined by this hardship. A compassionate neighbour regularly helps with chores cleaning, washing, and filling up buckets when water is available. Where infrastructure fails, humanity steps in. Oppah carries herself with quiet strength, managing her routines with courage and grace.

Across the city, water collection points are rarely designed with accessibility in mind. They’re uneven, slippery, and often unsafe especially for people with disabilities. The widespread neglect of burst pipes not only waste precious water, but forces people to collect it from contaminated ground pools. For those living with disabilities, such conditions heighten risk and dependency.

Unseen Strength: Bulawayo’s echoes of resilience does not centre on what these individuals lack. It celebrates what they possess: resilience, ingenuity, and pride. Through intimate photographs and stories, it sheds light on how people with disabilities are not waiting for rescue they are living, adapting, and thriving despite exclusion. Their lives challenge the narrative of victimhood. They are resourceful, determined, and above all, human. They do not want sympathy.  They want systems that see them, include them, and serve them equally. Until then, they continue charting their own paths through dry taps, broken pipes, and ignored voices.  Not as victims of a broken city, but as victors of their own lives.

© Margaret Lubinda, 2025