Mozambique: Only 33% funding for plan to aid two million people in north – UN report
Photo: Lusa
There are more and more hungry displaced people, sheltered from the war in Maincha Momade’s house, in Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique province immersed in a humanitarian crisis.
Eight months ago, the 47-year-old displaced person showed Lusa how 48 people were surviving in a precarious space with two rooms and a yard, but now the number has risen to 56.
“The situation continues because recently they attacked the island of Matemo and I had to take in [those who fled there] because there is no other way” except solidarity between inhabitants, she explained.
Matemo is one of the islands of the Quirimbas archipelago, a few kilometres off Cabo Delgado, an area of paradisiacal landscapes (islands where there have even been tourist developments), but subject to armed violence.
The residents flee, leaving everything behind, and as in any part of the world, food is the main necessity: “we eat breakfast in the morning and then wait for dinner”.
Waiting is a way of saving food: “if we cook during the day, at night we won’t have anything to eat and the children cry”, she said, showing the empty kitchen, with no pot on the fire.
Until night comes, “we fool our stomachs with dry cassava”.
Yatima Tauabo, 54, head of the block, is one of those responsible for registering the displaced and says that there are monthly cheques of 3,600 meticais (€50) for every 10 displaced people, in a local government effort involving neighbourhood authorities and humanitarian agencies.
The cheques give access only to food products in identified establishments.
Maincha’s house only receives two cheques to feed 56 people, and the head of the house acknowledges that it should receive at least five.
Tauabo points to another part of the neighbourhood: “that house has people from Meluco and an old woman,” all of whom still don’t have their cheques, she said, appealing to the authorities to “continue helping” the displaced people, in the hope of staving off hunger.
Maincha fled Macomia when the town suffered the first attack in 2020 and lives “as a favour” in a house in Paquitequete neighbourhood, where most of the families fleeing the conflict in the north and centre of the province land.
Of the 56 displaced, 10 are schoolchildren, but there are only four uniforms to go to class, as required by the rules.
Sharing the same clothes is part of the routines: “one comes back from school, immediately gives the uniform to another, since there are differences in schedules and study days,” said Maincha, showing two pairs of uniforms on a clothesline, washed with water from a neighbour, because in his house the supply was cut off for lack of payment.
The only water they don’t like is the rain at night, because most of the 56 who share the house have to sleep in the backyard, out in the open, for lack of space inside.
Inside, priority has been given to the young and elderly, outside no one sleeps properly when the backyard gets flooded.
“No, there is no room for everyone in there,” concludes Maincha, who nevertheless takes in more displaced people.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said earlier this month that Cabo Delgado experienced a “new spike in attacks and violence” at the end of January, which caused “another wave of thousands of displaced people in just a few weeks”.
According to the Integrated Food Security Classification followed by humanitarian bodies, 1.3 million people face food insecurity in Cabo Delgado, Nampula, Niassa and Zambézia provinces, as in Maincha’s home.
Since July 2021, an offensive by government troops with Rwandan support, later joined by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has allowed security to improve, recovering several areas where there was a rebel presence, but attacks continue in scattered areas of the province and neighbouring regions.
The conflict has caused over 3,100 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and over 859,000 displaced people, according to the Mozambican authorities.
Cabo Delgado province is rich in natural gas, but, terrorised since 2017, by armed rebels, with some attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.
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