Mozambique: Erosion of Beira city seen in warehouses engulfed by sea

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Mozambique: Erosion of Beira city seen in warehouses engulfed by sea

1:57 CAT | 12 Mar 2020

Picture: MSN / Lusa

João Daviro, 54, a fisherman, has seen three of his warehouses, one after the other, swallowed by the sea over the past decade, as erosion advances in Praia Nova, the town near of Beira.

“We keep moving away, but this one is almost” being destroyed by the waves, he said, pointing to the local fishermen’s association enclosure, where the advance of the sea is measured in lines of warehouses that are being knocked over like dominoes.

Daviro still remembers having a warehouse at the place where the sea is now, beyond a coastal protection bar.

The area is classified by the authorities as a risk area, there is no support for reconstruction there and there is a supply of land elsewhere for those who want to get out – and many did so after Cyclone Idai.

Having the house flooded had happened more often, it was normal, but that time (with Idai) it was all very terrible, Joaquim Tom, 32, said.

So terrible and different that he accepted the authorities’ offer and now he lives with his wife and six children 55 kilometres from Beira, in the countryside, in the Mutua resettlement.

But others do business with the land offered and then return to Praia Nova, says Daviro, witness to an endless degradation that continues one year after cyclone Idai.

Praia Nova is a degraded area where there is a permanent smell, with no health conditions, but where there are still streets full of life: informal trade stalls, restaurants, television halls and family homes.

Daviro said he only goes there for the fish warehouses: at the end of the day he goes home, somewhere else in the city, but he has 24 fishermen who sleep in the precarious constructions of patched sheet metal of Praia Nova.

Although he compares cyclone Idai “to a war”, Alberto Machava, 78, one of the neighbourhood’s leaders, said that the fishermen do not want to be far from the sea.

And it seems that it will not be easy to realise the dream of Daviz Simango, mayor of Beira. The mayor wants to demolish the entire neighbourhood of Praia Nova and turn it into an environmentally friendly riverside area to allow a clean enjoyment of the landscape between the mouth of the Chiveve River and the Indian Ocean.

Simango said that there are around €65 million available, through international donors, for the work to restore coastal protection in front of Praia Nova to start in the middle of this year.

The 2018/2019 rainy season was one of the most severe in Mozambique: 714 people died, including 648 victims of two cyclones (Idai and Kenneth) that hit Mozambique.

Cyclone Idai hit Mozambique in March, claimed 603 lives, and the city of Beira, one of the country’s major cities, was severely affected.

Cyclone Kenneth, which hit northern Mozambique in April, killed 45 people.

Source: Lusa