Flood victims seek to regain footing after deadly disaster
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By Holly Beech, [email protected]
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Catherine Ndala, a farmer and mother of five from Malawi's Phalombe District, stands by what's left of her home and after the flood. (Photos: Holly Beech)
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Pastor Henry Langison is among the thousands of people struggling to rebuild their lives after severe flooding in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar.
More than half of his 80-member congregation at the Dwanya Church of the Nazarene in southern Malawi lost their homes. But the pastor and his wife lost something irreplaceable: their 2-year-old son.
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Pastor Henry Langison and church members wait in line on 17 February during an NCM distribution.
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It was late at night when water began to rush through their home. Langison and his wife and five children fled toward higher ground, but they weren't able to save the 2-year-old boy from the strong current. The water was up to Langison's chest, he said.
More than a month later and still no sign of their son, the family believes they may never find his body.
Communities are reeling not only from the loss of homes and loved ones, but also from the loss of crops. Many residents in Malawi live off the land, which in some areas now look more like swamps than farms.
Esther Chitsulo, a farmer in the town of Chiringa in the Phalombe District of Malawi, grows rice and corn to provide for her family of nine. She usually harvests 20 bags of corn each season, she said. This year, she anticipates only five bags. It's too late in the season to replant corn.
This year's depleted harvest means relief efforts will need to be long-term, said Pastor Alex Mkandawire, the Malawi country coordinator for Nazarene Compassionate Ministries.
Last month, NCM's local team and the Lower Shire district superintendent distributed food and blankets to 500 Nazarene families (an estimated 3,000 people) who were identified by local pastors as being the most severely affected by the flood. NCM is planning another distribution trip for an additional 500 families.
On 17 February, the Malawi NCM team and Lower Shire District Superintendent Rev. Gershom Kwerakwera (not pictured) took flour, fish, blankets and cooking oil to Nazarene families in the Nsanje and Chikwawa districts.
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Because the bags of flour and bowl of dried fish won't last the families long, Mkandawire said he would like to do a second round of distributions if the funding is available.
The families live in rural towns that are difficult to reach because the flood destroyed bridges and carved muddy, deep ravines into the dirt roads. For the first 500 families, the cost to buy the supplies and transport them to the rural areas was $11,000 U.S. dollars, Mkandawire said.
Some of the remote communities reached by NCM had yet to receive aid from the government or non-governmental organizations, residents said. In some towns, NCM's team was greeted by songs of joy and hope. (Watch videos of the songs here and here.)
"The people are very excited because this (the distribution) is something they didn't expect to happen," Pastor Langison, speaking Chichewa, said through a translator.
When asked what would help them the most, several flood victims said they would like supplies such as seeds, fishing gear and farm tools so they can continue working.
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Top photo: Children from Nazarene churches in the Phalombe District greet the NCM team on 18 February.
Above: A boy fishes where a bridge has collapsed.
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Some who are living in the displacement
camps said their hope for the future is to buy property on higher ground and build a new home. Life is hard in the camp, said flood victim Mr. Yohane Acick Mello, and people are getting sick because they are staying in such close proximity to each other. Several families stay in one tent. Husbands no longer sleep by their wives, as men and women are in separate tents.
Twenty-one-year-old Sakaika Turuwa, a Nazarene Sunday school teacher, said it's hard to make plans for the future when all he can think about is what he will eat and where he will stay. He works as a bicycle repairman, but since the flood hit, work has been slow. In his tight-knit community, even turning to a neighbor for help is difficult, he said, because everyone has been hit by the same disaster.
"My major concern - and I believe it's the same for everyone here - we need the basic necessities. We need shelter, we need food, we need clothes, we need medicine," Turuwa said through a translator. "And we also need to be equipped so we can stand on our own after the disaster."
IN PICTURES: Examples of the flood damage in Southern Malawi, taken 17-18 of February. Residents say this was the worst flooding they had ever seen.
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Damaged homes like this one are scattered throughout southern Malawi.
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Commuting by bicycle and car has become a big challenge in rural areas.
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Many farms are still covered by water.
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Several bridges have collapsed.
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Only part of the Thuthuwa Church of the Nazarene in Malawi's Phalombe District still stands.
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At the site of a collapsed bridge near Bangula, Nsanje District, locals have set up boats and charge a fee to take people across the river.
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Floods damaged 49,200 hectares (121,576 acres) of crops in Malawi and 65,080 hectares (160,816 acres) in Mozambique, according to UNOCHA.
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RELIEF EFFORTS
The floods in Malawi killed an estimated 176 people and displaced 200,000 others, according to the Malawi government. Scores of people are still missing. Two members of the Nazarene Church in the Phalombe District died.
In neighboring Mozambique, a total of 158 people died, and more than 160,000 people were affected.
Several church members in central Madagascar also lost their homes after heavy rainfall in late February caused major flooding, according to Nazarene missionary Rev. Ronald Miller. The Nazarene Church in Madagascar quickly responded by distributing rice and malaria tablets and helping victims fix their roofs, Miller said.
Al Jazeera reports that Madagascar's capital of Antananarivo received almost half the amount of rainfall in one day that it normally sees in all of February. Fourteen people were killed and 24,000 displaced in the flooding.
NCM is one of the many non-profit organizations working to bring relief to the thousands of victims. Click on the button below to support these efforts.
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