After rain comes sunshine — if you’re willing to seize the chance of a new life.
Mozambique is trying to convince tens of thousands of people in low-lying areas who fall victim each year to floods during the summer rainy season to permanently resettle on higher ground.
Mozambique’s annual flood drama was first brought to the world’s attention in 2000 when a young woman was rescued by helicopter from her treetop perch after giving birth to a baby girl on a branch overhanging swirling floodwaters.
Flooding that year and the following year killed 700 people and displaced half a million more.
Determined to avoid repeat scenes, the government has set its sights on moving its citizens permanently out of harm’s way.
”What we are currently doing is to direct those affected to permanent new residential areas,” Bonifácio Antonio, a senior officer with the National Disaster Management Institute (INGC) said.
”We want to ensure that these people do not return to the places they used to live, which are flooded again and again, each rainy season.”
Since December, 95 000 people living along rivers that regularly burst their banks have been evacuated to resettlement centres on higher ground.
Some people have been evacuated more than once already this season but returned home to harvest crops, fish or tend to their livestock.
This year, however, the idea of permanent resettlement appears to be gaining currency as villagers, weary at the prospect of rebuilding razed homes and livelihoods from scratch, throw in the towel and resolve to stay on terra firma, at least most of the time.
”This is the third time I’ve been evacuated since 2000,” said Felismina Sábado, a mother of four who lost her husband in the 2001 floods, from a resettlement centre in Mutarara district, Tete province.
”In the past the government did little or nothing at all to help us start a new life here. They just left us here like animals to fend for ourselves so I returned home to grow vegetables and raise poultry.”
”Now I see a ray of hope. I was given a plot to grow vegetables, maize and rear some animals. I’ll just go down near the river in times where there are no huge rainfalls.”
As part of its efforts to anchor the villagers in the new areas, the INGC has instructed aid agencies to enroll the evacuees in what it calls food-for-reconstruction programmes.
”We’re not allowed to give free food,” says Petra Aschoff of anti-poverty agency German Agro Action, which runs programmes in two resettlement areas in Chinde district, Zambezia province.
The evacuees get food in exchange for producing materials to build themselves houses. For timber they cut down coconut trees and sand from the river is used in making bricks.
An exception has been made for the month of February when the flooding is expected to peak, according to the United Nations World Food Programme’s Peter Keller-Transburg. ”The INGC has given the go-ahead for general food distribution,” he said.
The resettlement programme appears to be bearing fruit. Of the 2 700 families that were brought to four centres in Chinde district last year, about 2 000 stayed and built a home, says Aschoff. The government is also starting to improve amenities in the resettlement areas. Toilets, health centres, schools and gravel roads are all being built or planned to give Mozambicans more reasons to stay put when the floods recede.
Meanwhile, Tropical Cyclone Gula was on Tuesday afternoon heading towards Mauritius, east of Madagascar, according to the Tropical Storm Risk website.
By midday GMT on Tuesday, Gula was a category-one cyclone with winds of up to 139km/h. It was predicted to strengthen to a category-two storm by Wednesday and pass closely to the east of Mauritius later in the week. – Sapa-DPA