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TIME EUROPE
Web Exclusive
Water World
The floods in Mozambique have left thousands homeless, wet, and hungry
By SIMON ROBINSON Maputo
The queue waiting for the South African Air Force Oryx and B.K.117
helicopters was short and orderly in the morning, just 200 people or so. But
by midday, with the sun scorching overhead and people growing more desperate,
it had grown longer and contained perhaps 2,000 people. They carried
blankets, suitcases stuffed with clothes and the few precious photographs and
papers they had saved from the raging floodwaters that have engulfed vast
areas of southern and central Mozambique for weeks and are only now receding.
A woman gives water to her child at a field hospital in Chokwe
Karel Prinsloo/AFP-Pool
One old woman clung to a yellow plastic bucket filled with cooking utensils.
A teenage boy wore a muddy T-shirt covered in images from the movie Titanic.
People pushed to get to the front of the line. Hungry babies cried. Tempers
flared.
The sliver of land outside the town of Pegões on the banks of the Limpopo
River where the people queued had become a makeshift camp. An old man lay
perfectly still, unable even to prop himself up on his elbows. Families
huddled together under blankets stretched between sticks. Old women mashed
bananas and maize
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before cooking them. Mothers fried grasshoppers and roasted their last
chickens over tiny fires. Everywhere people drank the muddy brown water
scooped from the floodwaters. A few goats picked their way across a slimy
field looking for food. Louise Biela, 40, a teacher from the local primary
school, had gathered his wife and five children and joined the queue early
that morning to make sure they were rescued. "I will come back when the water
is finished," he said, shuffling forward as another group of 20 dashed to one
of the waiting helicopters. Biela remembers the floods of 1977. "But that was
small and this is big. I've never seen it this big." Mike van Wyk from Safety
and First Aid Management, a private South African company helping the rescue
operation, said rumors of a cholera outbreak had panicked people. "If it goes
on like this there's definitely going to be typhoid, malaria--every disease
you can think of will come up."
Families wait for medical treatment at a makeshift Médecins sans Frontières
clinic in Chokwe
Enric Marti/AP
The smell was over-powering: rotting vegetation and animal carcasses mixed
with burning charcoal and disease. With so much water around, toads and river
snakes had bred and hopped or slithered around the edge of camp. Children
threw rocks at the snakes and cheered when they scored a hit.
Thirty-four-year old Thomas Zimba, who works as a shoemaker in Johannesburg,
had come back to Pegões to visit his family. When the rains had started he
decided to stay. He and his family lived on the roof of their house for five
days with no food. "It's too much," he said, joining the end of the
ever-lengthening queue. "Why did this happen?" His jacket fell open to reveal
a shiny black shoe in each inside pocket. "These are my wife's best shoes,"
he said. "She may need them."
Once aboard a helicopter, the rescued clung to each other as they flew over
the huge inland sea which covered once prime farming land. Villages lay
covered by silt and vegetation; a train track disappeared either side of an
elevated bridge; cattle waded knee deep in water or huddled on tiny islands.
After landing in nearby Chibuto, a slightly elevated town spared the worst of
the floods, the displaced were taken to camps run by aid agencies like Save
the Children U.S. "Even though these people have been rescued, the problems
are only just beginning," said Lindsey Davies, a spokeswoman for the UN's
World Food Program. A fuel shortage in Chibuto meant two large water tanks at
the main Wenela camp sat unfilled. By Saturday, with 3,500 people already in
the camp, there were just two toilets. "As the search and rescue phase is
winding down, we need to get more organized on the ground," said Davies.
Isabelle Yersin, a nurse from the French aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières
tested people for cholera and tuberculosis. "The quality of the water they
are drinking is a real problem," she said. "Everyone is fearing a big
epidemic." Christine Knudsen from Save the Children U.S. said many of those
arriving at the camp were weak and malnourished. "Unless they get regular
food, they will become much sicker."
Each step forward begets new problems. Those lucky enough to be rescued face
life in camps where disease can spread and water and food are hard to come
by. In the rush to save as many people as possible, children were separated
from parents. The huge amount of food, medicine and equipment now arriving at
the country's international airport in Maputo is creating a bottleneck. But
the biggest challenge in rebuilding this southern African country will come
in the months and years ahead. A third of the country's crops have been
destroyed, roads and railway lines wiped out, entire villages have just
disappeared. "I don't think things will ever be the same again," says Biela,
moving slowly up the queue to be rescued. "It will be hard to get back to
normal." His countrymen share his concerns.
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How to Help
Links to the websites of charities and NGOs participating in the Mozambique
relief effort
ON THE FLOODS:
March 13, 2000
A Nation Drowns
Weeks after the deluge began in Mozambique, relief is pouring in. Is it too
little, too late?
March 6, 2000
The Birth of a Raging Beast
Mozambique is devastated by flooding as Cyclone Eline hits southern Africa
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