Telling the ECSA Story

By Jennifer Bose, Emergency Communications Officer, CARE · There is a sea of mud and rubble for as far as the eyes can see. In one of the poorest neighborhoods in Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique, the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai is plain to see. It’s all around you. The blazing sun is searing to the skin. Yesterday, my personal nightmare was not having running water in the guesthouse, forcing me to shower with a bucket full of cold water. Looking at the children playing in dirty water around me, my “phobia” vanishes almost instantly. There’s rubble everywhere. Parts of metal roofs have sunk into the mud and large patty fields now have the same effects as quicksand, making them impossible to cross. In the middle of the narrow walkways, puddles remind me of the vast flooding people experienced here just a few days ago. "The water was up to my hips," Manuela tells me. She ran outside with her eight-month-old daughter, Mariam, when the cyclone ble

By Joseph Scott The spectre of flooding has always hung over Chitsa village in Nsanje, Rhoda Benford says. A fact of life during rainy seasons, the floods have traditionally always been anticipated during the month of January. So, when the month of January passed without incident, Rhoda thought the worst was over and started preparing for a good harvest. This year, she says, the crop had been good and she expected a bumper harvest. “I had a good crop of maize, some millet and a lot of pumpkins,” says the mother of five. “But all has been washed away.” Cyclone Idai caught communities unaware Like many in her village, Rhoda never saw the Cyclone Idai induced floods coming. She was looking into the future with hope. Almost 80 percent of people affected by the floods rely on their small holder farms as a source of income and for their livelihood. So, having a good harvest means much more than just a meal on the table. “If I get surplus harvest, I sell some to get mo