Cyclone scars Ntauchila

Tales of death echo loudly in Ntauchila Village in Chiradzulu where 17 people were found dead and 25 missing after flash floods and a  landslide triggered by Cyclone Freddy last month.

The Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) reports that the tropical cyclone has affected at least 2.2 million people, with 679 confirmed dead, 2 178 injured, 537 still missing and 659 278 displaced persons living in 747 camps.

The heart-wrenching story is accompanied by sights of scarred faces, broken limbs and heartbreaking story.

Even four weeks after the longest-lasting cyclone flattened the village, an evacuation camp at Nguludi Girls Primary School, six kilometres away, bears marks of the deadly catastrophe.

During the visit, wounded children were seen at play in the face of the tragedy as grief-stricken adults perched in despair on verandas of overcrowded classrooms. Each has a tale to tell.

Besides the fresh wounds sustained while fleeing the disaster zone and sacrificing their lives to save their beloved, the survivors bear mental scars.

Samson Nyalugwe, 17, sustained a fractured leg and arm. He arrived at the overwhelmed camp after being discharged from Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital where he underwent a surgery.

On arrival at the camp, he had no idea days later what was left of his home in Ntauchila after the devastation caused by Cyclone Freddy.

His parents and five other siblings all fled to the camp having lost their house and property, including animals.

Samson carries his left arm carefully as he shifted positions, a desperate attempt to suppress the excruciating pain.

He describes his father as a hero who singlehandedly saved his family members one by one. He carried them on his back one by one.

Camp leader Mercy Mwasiya is also the headteacher at Nguludi Girls Primary School, which has received food and other relief support from various well-wishers, including the Catholic Archdiocese of Blantyre and Marriage Encounter (South), a Catholic family movement.

“We desperately need painkillers. Most of the survivors here sustained injuries. They are still in pain and cannot sleep without painkillers,” she says.

Another heartbreak tormenting the displaced community is: Where are we going from here?

“They have no idea. They have no home,” says Mwasiya.

The camp shelters 101 people from 65 families.

Robert Kapichi, 11, and his sister Witness, 17, destroyed lost parents and four other siblings during the disaster. They have no one to support them.

Cyclone Freddy destroyed their house and their family in a blink of an eye, they say.

Austin Maloya, 43, was on the way to Limbe Town in Blantyre City when he got news that flash floods and mudslide from the hillsides had flattened the village near the Catholic University of Malawi.

Upon his return, he found nothing left where his family house stood. His parents, five siblings and four relatives were gone with the mudslides.

Maloya joined a community-led search for bodies buried in mud. The team unearthed the body of his sister Agnes while two other siblings were found alive.

“Only these two and I survived in my extended family of 12,” he recounts. “I have to take care of the pair despite having no job and no place to call home.”

Lonjezo Nkuyu, 30, doubted the resilience of his house when torrents and heavy winds started pounding a day before the disaster. He took  his wife to relocate to her parents’ house within the village.

Nkuyu’s wife and parents-in-law were swept away when the cyclone hit their house around 5am.

“I heard a thunderous sound before the walls fell and the roof was blown away. I was swept away in a stream of mud,” he explains.

The mudslides and racing flood threw him.

He explains: “I was saved by a kiln of bricks, where I was stuck before water started receding. For a moment, I thought I was going to die. I said a prayer: Lord, receive my soul.”

Nkuyu shared his experience when Marriage Encounter members visited the camp at Nguludi Catholic Mission.

Dodma  reports that the tropical cyclone has affected more than 2.2 million people, with 679 confirmed dead, 2 178 injured, 537 still missing and 659 278 displaced persons living in 747 camps.