Environment

Flood survivors push for resilience

For years, the soils washed away from the heavily degraded Shire Highlands have buried rivers in Nsanje and Chikwawa in silt.

Siltation has left the rivers shallow and blurred their course, making them prone to break their banks and flood the surrounding settlements, even with normal rainfall in the highlands.

Communities in group village head (GVH) Msomo, Traditional Authority Ngabu in Chikwawa District, have become victims of floods from the Mikalango River.

Banda inspects the dyke in his community

Devastating floods have damaged their homes and washed away their belongings during the rainy season since 2010.

The floods affect nine of the 59 villages under GVH Msomo.

Esther Stephano of Mpinganjira Village says her household of five has plunged into poverty due to the devastating floods that have become more frequent and severe with climate change.

 “Tropical Storm Ana in 2022 was the worst as it crushed almost everything and we escaped with the only clothes we wore on January 24. I lost my home and belongings, including food,” she says.

According to the Department of Disaster Management Affairs, the rainstorm affected about one million people and displaced around 25 000 families.

In 2014, sudden floods redirected the river’s course towards the people’s homes and threatened to rip off classrooms at Linga Primary School in the area.

The 38-year-old woman says every rainy season denies her peace of mind.

“I want to move upland,” she says. “However, I’ve no money to buy safe land elsewhere, but I am willing to move far away from this river that has moved closer to the villages.”.

Like many survivors in the Shire Valley districts, Stephano still lives out of the way of floods, which have become more frequent and devastating amid the climate crisis.

However, through the village disaster risk management committee in 2016, the communities started implementing water and land management activities such as dredging and tree-planting to address the situation.

The committees secretary Davie Banda says they want to lessen the frequency and severity of the river’s increasingly devastating annual overflows.

“We planted trees along the river banks and nurtured a forest to protect the school,” he says.

Almost every household has planted neem trees to shield them from floods and strong winds.

Later, they appealed for assistance from government and non-governmental organisations to help make the community resilient to frequent disasters.

Bankrolled by Norwegian Church Aid and Danish Church Aid, the communities have constructed a 45-metre dyke worth K6.9 million along the banks of the flood-prone river.

However, GVH Msomo asked for more resources to construct “a long and big dyke to cover all villages”.

“The dyke will save part of my community, but it is not enough,” he says. “More people remain exposed to the floods likely to occur this year. We appeal for K20 million to extend the dyke so that we don’t leave anyone behind.”

As farmers in the Shire Highlands find relief with the resumption of the rains, Stephano and others along the Mikalango River are gripped with fear for their lives and property as they do not know what the floods will do to them.

Rains returned to the Shire Valley districts last week, forcing people to plant again as a prolonged dry spell scorched the first crop planted last November.

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