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Búzi. Photos: A Verdade
“We were just recovering from the cyclone when the water came,” said one of the many survivors in the district at the epicentre of the floods that followed Cyclone Idai and left at least 447 dead in central Mozambique. “But the village of Búzi is no longer submerged,” he also told @Verdade.
“We were recovering from the cyclone when the water came. Around 6:00 p.m. (on Saturday 16 March) a neighbour came to say that there were floods. She lives near the Búzi river. Since there was no electricity because of the cyclone, a police car drove round warning people to evacuate. I took some things, and we went to the centre of the village, to the Community Radio there, on the first floor. There were other neighbours there too,” Fernando Domingos told A Verdade by phone.
Domingos was with his wife, two children of aged three and four, his sister-in-law and a nephew. “The water rose very fast, right until 9:00 p.m.. At midnight, there were a hundred of us standing together, adults and children. We stayed there until Thursday (March 21).”
“We survived by helping each other. What little we had managed to bring, we shared. We gave priority to the children, who ate one meal a day.”
He recalls the endless crying of the children, who had not yet recovered from the strong winds that the cyclone had brought when they were forced to face the floods, two traumas in one life.
A resident in Búzi since birth, Fernando Domingos’ brick-built house is about one kilometre from where he sought refuge. He cannot remember flooding like it. “It had already rained a lot, but we thought that, if there were floods, (like every year) it would not be very serious. Even in 2000, when the water rose a lot, it wasn’t like this.”
Very limited support for those not in accommodation centres
Domingos said that the district government did not abandon them, but the only support it was able to provide was moral. “The first helicopter, which threw some crackers, only came on Monday.”
“The village of Búzi is no longer submerged, but some localities near the riverine are still under water,” says Domingos, who is trying to start life again by his own efforts. “Now that the water has gone down, we are trying to start a new life, but we still have no energy or drinking water, the bank is still closed, the Mpesa system is down and prices have increased a lot. A sack of flour that was 850 meticais now costs 1,400.”
“Yesterday (Sunday, 24 March) the government began to distribute some support: rice, pasta, oil, salt and sugar, but not enough for a whole family.”
Fernando Domingos is among the 128,941 citizens who are living in 143 accommodation centres set up by the government, with the help of the numerous national and foreign humanitarian organisations pouring into Mozambique.
He is one of the millions who has a conventional home, now roofless, and needs at least some basic material to start life again.
$102 million for emergency and rehabilitation activities through August
The Mozambican government has still not officially made public its estimate of what is needed for rescue and emergency humanitarian assistance. The World Food Program said it had made an initial request of $40 million while the United Nations Children’s Fund revealed that it needed $30 million in first-resort aid.
However, on Saturday (23-03), the United Nations, through its Office of Humanitarian Affairs, which has taken over coordination of humanitarian assistance in Mozambique, revealed that President Nyusi’s government had provisionally requested US$102 million for emergency activities and rehabilitation between March and the end of August this year.
By Adérito Caldeira, on March 26, 2019
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