Temporary shelter: Nessie and her family waited for two days in a makeshift port like this one, with very little food, after being rescued by a fisherman in a dugout canoe. (Simon Allison/M&G)
Ndamera — On March 8, in the late evening, Edward Biasi was at home listening to the radio. It was still raining, as it had been for the past week. The news was alarming: meteorologists were predicting even more rain, and possibly floods.
With the luxury of hindsight, we know that this was the huge storm that would leave much of southern Malawi under water, killing at least 59 people. The storm then headed out into the Indian Ocean, where it gathered energy, returning as Cyclone Idai to pulverise Beira and surrounding provinces in both Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
But Biasi, a portly old man without front teeth, had no such luxury. He is the group village headman for Thaundi, a small, picturesque village (population 330) on the west bank of the Shire River. It is in the heart of the southern wetlands, a vast plain of arable land ringed by mountains. In the good times, the topography makes this the most fertile soil in the country.
“You don’t need fertiliser, everything just grows,” said Biasi.
In the bad times, the plains act like a giant bucket, collecting all the water that runs off the hills.
Among Biasi’s many responsibilities is to react to extreme weather warnings. Knowing how to respond is never easy. Evacuating means abandoning the maize and bean crops, which were just weeks away from harvesting and this year were on track to be good ones. Without that food, the village cannot eat. It also means leaving livestock to their certain deaths.
Nonetheless, he made his decision quickly. It was time to pack up and go.
This is not the first time he has had to make such a difficult call. Biasi has been headman since 1978, when he took over from his grandfather. He cannot remember how many times Thaundi has had to be evacuated but he does know that it is happening far more frequently. The last major flood was just four years ago, in 2015.
“In my village, we always get flooded. But it’s different from the past. It would happen once every 10 years and the waters weren’t so high. Now it’s more frequent.”
After each disaster, with increasing reluctance, he returns home. “We keep going back because we can’t have land anywhere else.”
Five chiefs report to Biasi and, at about 10pm, he spoke to them about the impending disaster. They did not have a formal, sit-down discussion — there simply wasn’t time. Preparations to leave began immediately and, by 8am the next morning, the first canoes were crossing the river, heading to the relative safety of Ndamera, a larger village on higher ground on the other side of the river. Ndamera has offered refuge for decades when the waters come.
There was no room for people to bring much in the way of belongings — just the clothes on their backs and maybe a few pots and pans. All the goats, chickens and guinea fowl had to be left behind.
Not everybody heeded the call to evacuate.
“Most left, but some stayed,” said Biasi. “Sometimes people are not sure, they think the water is not moving so fast. But this time they were wrong.”
Never a bluegum
In times of great calamity, the smallest details can be the difference between life and death. What saved Nessie and her family’s lives was the knowledge that bluegum trees become slippery when wet. Mango trees, however, retain their grip.
Nessie (35) and her husband and two children had decided to remain in Thaundi, hoping and praying that the waters would not rise any further and that they would not have to abandon their whole life’s work and start again from nothing.
The prayers were in vain. A night or two after the rest of the village had left — she cannot remember exactly when — she awoke to the feeling of moisture on her face. She rose quickly and stepped outside. The river had spilled its banks and the water was up to her knees. She quickly woke the family.
She strapped her two-year-old daughter to her back with a fold of chitenge. Her husband took their seven-year-old son. They looked for a suitable mango tree and clambered up.
And then they waited, watching as the water rose until their house and all their belongings were totally submerged. For two long days and longer nights they waited but no one came to their rescue.
While she waited, Nessie could not stop thinking about what happened to another woman in her village in the 2015 floods. She, also stuck in the high branches of a tree, collapsed with exhaustion and fell with her baby into the water below. Neither survived.
Even now, with Nessie’s baby giggling safely on dry land, this is all she can think about. “I keep imagining what would happen if I fell into the water and what would happen then.”
She didn’t get much sleep in the tree.
“There were times when I dozed off, but I would wake up every few minutes. We were so hungry. The baby was so hungry that she was biting my arm.”
Eventually, a fisherman, searching for survivors, rowed up in a dugout. Rescue came at a price — 1 000 kwacha (R20) a person — but the family was in no position to bargain.
The fisherman rowed them to a makeshift port on the east bank of the river, where they waited for another two days with no blankets or mosquito nets, and only a few handfuls of food, until word came from their chief to join the rest of the village in Ndamera.
“This time, it’s better than in 2015. This time no one from our village died,” said Nessie.
Even my laugh is weak
Joel Kadalinga (47) saw trouble coming — years ago. After the 2015 floods, he saved up to build a house in Ndamera.
“Our area is a flood and famine area. One year I got the money and I moved. It’s very safe here because it’s up [high].”
He and his family still live and farm in Thaundi. They grow maize to eat, and beans and sugar cane to sell. But at the first hint of floods to come, they escape to Ndamera, only a few hours away in normal times, to wait it out. This year they moved in January, just in case, and when the river began to rise in Thaundi, they were already in a fully equipped place of safety.
“It was hard for the village to sense that this was a dangerous situation,” he said. “The weather these days is unpredictable. It was only when the water was up to their necks that they moved.”
Kadalinga was on hand to welcome the villagers displaced from Thaundi when they straggled in, as well as those from dozens of other villages who made their way here. There are 4 747 displaced people in Ndamera, from 1 150 households. He has taken on a formal role as camp secretary, helping to manage the allocation of food aid and to oversee the various water and sanitation projects that aid organisations are implementing.
The United Nations Children’s Agency, for example, has built a water treatment plant to filter the contaminated borehole water and installed several new toilets.
There is only so much anyone can do, however. Although all the new arrivals have some form of temporary accommodation and the children have been welcomed into the local school, food remains scarce. Rations provided by the government and humanitarian agencies are just two cups of maize meal a family a day. For the rest of their diet, the men go out to hunt, fish or forage or try to pick up piecework in unaffected communities. It is never enough.
“I’m so hungry that even my laugh is weak,” said Nessie.
Kadalinga is even more worried about what happens when the flood waters recede and the villagers of Thaundi return home.
“Three months from now, we will go back. We will continue with our yearly activities. All the moisture in the soil means that the next harvest will be excellent but we have to survive until then. We need support to do so.”
And then? “We are worried. It’s tiresome. We build our homes and then two or three years later they are destroyed.”
For Biasi, there is some small measure of pride that he made the right decision. Despite the devastation of their homes, no one from Thaundi died in the floods. No one was injured. But he knows that, if the weather continues to behave so erratically, there will be a next time.
“I don’t think the village will still be there in 50 years. I don’t think anyone should live there now. But that’s the only land that we have, so what choice have we got? It’s very painful for me and my people but we have no choice.”