Imagine that once every three years your home is washed away, all your possessions are destroyed and your children miss months of school. You have no insurance and you have to start your life from scratch. Until it happens again. Welcome to life in the Zambezi River valley.
The rural areas of Zambezia province are Mozambique’s poorest and most densely populated, and it is these areas that have been hardest hit by recent floods. Many of the people living in what are officially known as “resettlement zones” or “accommodation centres” are still in shock as they take inventory of their lives. The litany of items lost to the elements often represents the sum of a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice: a goat, two chickens, a bicycle, blankets, a radio, pots and pans. And as their machambas (plots) disappeared under the rising tide, so did their investments of time, hard labour and hope.
At the Zona Verde camp, Adelia Simbe (45) tells how her brother crammed her and her six children into his canoe and paddled them to safety. “We had heard about the floods on the radio, but thought it wouldn’t affect us, because last year the floods were a lot less. During the night the river rose up to our door. In the morning it was up to here,” she says, drawing her hand across her waist.
Her brother has gone back to their machamba to keep guard and to try to salvage some seeds from their crops of rice, maize and beans, as the water levels drop. Without these it will be almost impossible for the family to begin again. “We are left crying because of a lack of seeds,” Simbe laments. She says the family will continue to tend their fields on the richly fertile flood plain, but won’t move back permanently. Her husband went to Beira three years ago and she hasn’t seen him since. “I have been here for a month and I am going to stay here forever. My children are missing a lot of school and it is too much hardship to move up and down each time there is a flood.”
It is difficult to imagine hardships greater than the ones she is facing now. She and her children sleep in a tiny structure of sticks and grass. It has no real walls to speak of and the soil floor will turn into a swamp when it rains. Inside, there is one blanket and a few charred sticks from last night’s fire. “It is tough in the camps. There is not much food and we don’t have pots and plates. We struggle with getting water and now it is hard to go to the river because of the crocodiles.” Her sister-in-law managed to save some cooking utensils, so Simbe cooks with her. They have received basic rations of rice, beans and a little cooking oil, but sustenance is a daily battle.
The government is working with NGOs such as the Red Cross, Médicins sans Frontières and Save the Children to distribute emergency food rations, water purification kits and household items such as blankets and pots, but transporting the huge volumes required by a camp of 7 000 people is a logistical nightmare. Priority is given to orphans and child-headed households or those families who have lost absolutely everything.
Ten-year-old Maria Duarte’s family fled their home in Chamanga as the waters rose.
“I was so scared when the water came. I couldn’t bring anything in the canoe, and we left many things behind.” When asked which personal possession she wishes she could have saved, Maria replies unhesitatingly: “My plate.”
Those who heeded the early flood warnings managed to bring some belongings with them and those with a little cash can buy cups of tiny silver fish, whole tobacco leaves wrapped in screws of paper torn from an old exercise book, little cubes of soap and matches. For the rest, conditions in the camps demand resourcefulness and an entrepreneurial spirit. Paulo José Braga (22) lives in the camp and goes into the bush daily to collect firewood that he sells to other residents, so he can buy some food. Despite his own struggles, he also works as a volunteer, assisting with weighing and measuring of babies, to save visiting health workers valuable time. At night, he goes to school as his ambition this year is to complete grade seven.
Many of the camps are accessible only by narrow tracks, which are soon churned up and potholed by the heavy trucks carrying food supplies. The trip from Mopeia to Namirere — a distance of about 65km — took us almost three hours in a 4×4. Namirere is one of the smaller camps in the province, with about 2 300 people, 1 700 of whom are children. A school tent has been erected by Unicef and two teachers from the village teach children in shifts. Nurse Luis Chipuanha examines children outside his tent, making meticulous notes in old-fashioned copperplate script, recording the number of cases of diarrhoea, dysentery and malaria. He is happy to report there have been no deaths.
Rain comes suddenly, sending adults scurrying into the big school tent for shelter. It has the opposite effect on a gaggle of small children who tear out into the deluge, shedding tattered items of clothing and shrieking joyously. The camp’s main path becomes a race track as children sprint through the pelting rain, splashing and sliding, and enjoying a respite from the oppressive heat. A toddler, with pipe-cleaner limbs and a grossly distended belly, drops to his hunkers, dips his face in the torrent pouring down the path and sucks up water. Tomorrow he may be in the queue outside Chipuanha’s tent.
A farmer’s few precious seeds. A 10-year-old’s only plate. A young man’s struggle to get an education. Even minor disasters illustrate how easily fragile livelihoods can be tipped over the line between coping and catastrophe.