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Flying by helicopter over the immense surface of the flood water in Mozambique impresses evokes a feeling of utmost despair. Flood victims have been stranded on small islands of the landscape, roofs of houses, and tops of trees. The movements of a rowing boat or some refugees’ cries for help from a church steeple are but the actions breaking the immobile landscape.
In Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, we meet victims from the floods. Thousands of people need new housing. Their former dwellings were destroyed by the heavy rainfall which hit Maputo the 5th and 6th of February. Half a meter of rain fell during these two days, coursing extensive damage on roads, houses, electricity systems, and water purification stations. Especially the "bairros," the informal settlements around the city, were damaged.
In Matola, a suburb to Maputo, we meet some families who have lost their houses and belongings. In a former cashew nut processing hall, with only a straw mats as protection from the cold cement floor, 141 families wait to be relocated to new plots where can construct new houses to substitute their former dwellings. There are sounds of voices talking, babies crying, and clatters of pots and pans. The men stay in a separate room, away from the women. They all dream of a secure place to live without having to dread future rainfalls.
Helena Carlos (see photo) sits on the the floor nursing her newborn baby. The floods destroyed her house. She has now been living in the factory for three weeks together with her husband, brothers, and children.
Helena agrees to show us where her former house was situated. We leave the factory hall and drive through narrow streets with huge potholes, until we reach the bairro where Helena used to live. The final passage we have to enter by foot, stumbling over bricks and debris left by the whirling floods, which have dug a huge cleft in the red soil. Water is still remaining in puddles and streamlets where some ducks waddle.
Parts of houses are spread around, and the buildings, which are left, have damp blemishes showing the past water level. Clothes are "hung to dry" also outside the ruins of Helena’s house. "I come here every day, because I miss my house and my neighbors", says Helena. "But we cannot rebuild our house here, it is too dangerous. We need a secure place so we will not be afraid of sleeping at night, again to be flooded."
Eliseu da Silva Machava, Program Coordinator at the Ecumenical Committee for Social Development is working together with LWF (Lutheran World Federation) in order to aid 598 families victimized by the floods. Eliseu’s first priority is to find plots where the families can be allocated new land. This has finally become a reality for 300 families who have now been offered land in Machava, a part of Matola. The municipality of Matola has donated the land and cooperated with LWF who has made sure that sanitation and correct planning is in place. Eliseu is smiling widely when he talks about the new land where the homeless families can start constructing their houses."
Helena does not yet know whether she belongs to one of the lucky families who will be granted a plot, but she is optimistic. She is sitting with her baby in her arms, her elder child hiding behind her. "I think I will name by baby after the floods, she says, maybe it will bring him strength".
March 3, 2000
Photos: Ulla Hauer/ACT International
Source: Action by Churches Together, http://www.act-intl.org.
You can support UMCOR's response to this disaster through donations to the Churchwide Appeal for Flood Recovery in Mozambique and Neighboring Countries, Advance #156500. Checks may be dropped in United Methodist church collection plates or mailed directly to UMCOR at 475 Riverside Dr., Room 330, New York, NY 10115. Credit-card donations can be made by calling 1-800-554-8583.