Thirty-nine-year-old Julieta Hobjana, a single mother of three children, has mixed feelings about her new home, situated on high ground in the flood-prone district of Manhiça, in the southern province of Maputo.
True, her old home in the lowlands evokes traumatic memories of the devastating floods that peaked in February 2000, claiming hundreds of lives, washing away crops and destroying infrastructure including roads and bridges.
Hobjana did not lose any family members, but she lost all her possessions for the second time in her life. Just over eight years before the floods, her community had suffered repeated attacks during the 16-year-long civil war between the government and Renamo rebels. She was abducted and had her farming tools stolen and oxen killed.
The risk of more floods is the reason for the move to her current home. She still remembers the 2000 disaster as if it had happened yesterday. Hobjana and her two children, aged seven and eleven years at the time, had to seek refuge at the top of a tree to escape the rolling flood waters below.
”We saw an old woman, who had climbed to the roof of her house, being washed away. There was nobody that was not terrified,” said Hobjana. ”The children were crying. We stayed the whole night in the tree until the arrival of a helicopter the next morning. When the men inside the helicopter told me that the children go first, I was frightened that they were taking my children away and would leave me behind.”
Her children were also reluctant to go. Julio, now 14-years-old, said being pulled by a rope into the helicopter from the tree was the worst part of it all.
”I was scared of the helicopter. I preferred to stay in the tree.”
To avoid such a disaster again, the government, with the support of the United Nations and NGOs, has resettled tens of thousands of families on higher ground. Some 20 000 families have been resettled in Manhiça alone.
Hobjana has built a small two-roomed home of cane with zinc roofing. She has nearby, portable water and her two older children are in a local school.
But since relocating her family a couple of years ago, Mozambique has suffered erratic rainfall. Hobjana’s plot of maize in her new home has dried up for the second consecutive year. The flood-prone lowlands are the only area that has had some rainfall. Like many others in the community, Hobjana has now built a temporary grass hut in the lowlands where she still has a plot of land. But this year there has been so little rain that her crop there has failed too.
The local administration official in Manhiça, Fanuel Fumo, said the authorities accept that the people who have been resettled are returning to the lowlands to farm because there is usually some rainfall, even during periods of drought in the rest of the region. The land there is also more fertile.
”We advise them not to set themselves up permanently there because of the risk of floods, but we can’t stop them farming, as we don’t want them to go hungry.”
Fumo said survival in the region has always been precarious. ”There is never any peace for us here: we have had war, floods, and now drought and the HIV/Aids epidemic.”
HIV/Aids has further increased the urgency of the humanitarian crisis, as those sick with Aids-related illnesses are facing food shortages when, more than ever, they need nutritious diets to survive.
Dire poverty is also widespread. Many of the households in the southern part of Mozambique are female-headed as the men seek employment in neighbouring South Africa, often staying there for years at a time, or sometimes never returning if they raise new families. Hobjana’s first husband was shot dead in South Africa in 1991. The father of her last-born child has another wife and does not support her.
At first, the resettled families received free food. Now they can participate in food-for-work projects, which the World Food Programme (WFP) supports. Yet, this is becoming increasing inadequate, given the growing food crisis in the region.
WFP has warned that millions of people in southern Africa, especially in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, will face massive food shortages from this month ‒- the lean period — due to significant funding shortfalls.
In July, WFP appealed for $308-million to fund some 540 000mt of food, enough to feed 6,5-million people until June of next year in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland, Lesotho and Malawi. Despite repeated appeals, WFP has received only 24% of what is required, and has unmet needs amounting to $235-million.
In Mozambique an assessment by WFP and the Food and Agricultural Organisation identified 659 000 people in 40 districts, including Manhiça, as ”extremely food insecure”.
They need immediate and continued assistance until the next harvest in March/April 2004. The survey also identified a further 255 000 people in those district who are at risk of deteriorating food insecurity from this month onwards.
”Now we’re in the lean season, WFP was planning to increase its level of assistance, but due to the under-funded operation and severe commodity shortfalls in the country, we will have to curb our assistance at the current levels,” said Katerina Gola, the WFP reporting and information officer.
It was the afternoon and Hobjana and her children had not eaten anything all day. She was hoping to scrape together sweet potato leaves to cook with maize meal.
Hobjana said their situation should get better this month because it was her turn to take part in the food-for-work programme, and she is about to receive rations for her family.
WFP’s 40 NGO partners are providing 526 656 people in Mozambique with assistance through food-for-work, group feeding for those classified as ”vulnerable”, and school feeding in the drought-affected provinces of Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane in the southern region of the country, parts of Sofala and Manica provinces in the centre, and Tete province in the north.
In Manhica, some 500 people have benefited from the food-for-work programme, but it is only able to run on a rotational basis as there is not enough food to allow everybody in need to participate each month.
”We feel that we shouldn’t have to be doing a rotation system, as people need to have food every day,” said Tom Shortley, WFP’s emergency coordinator.
”Our partners and the communities have to make difficult decisions as to who should get food. The difference between those classified as high- and low-risk people in Mozambique is minimal.”
Anita Watch, the district aid food monitor for WFP in Manhiça, confirmed the pressure on households. They consume all the food rations they receive in exchange for their labour, rather than selling some of it for vital items like soap.
”The food is enough for the family each month, but the food-for-work programmes are not enough for the population who have been resettled,” she explained.
Hobjana said she enjoyed participating in the food-for-work. Her job was to clear roads and drains in her community. ”It will give us something to eat,” she said simply. For the month’s work, Hobjana will receive 77 kilos of maize, almost three litres of oil and 7,5 kilos of beans.
She reminisced about happier times as she sat outside her cane home with Domingo, her youngest child, aged two. He looked lethargic and was stunted for his age, with a swollen belly and spindly, thin legs. Hobjana conceded that she has not weighed Domingo for a long time. She appeared to be unaware of the importance of taking him to the health centre for regular check-ups. The lack of food for the family was her more immediate concern.
She remembered the past, when she had oxen to help her cultivate her large plot of land in the lowlands. She grew maize, beans, onions and tomatoes and was able to feed her family, and even had a regular surplus to sell.
Asked about her future, she says she thinks about a lot of things, but ”since I’ve never been to school, the main thing I want to be able to do is to farm again”. -Irin