Heart breaks as floods keep anxious relatives guessing

A dark cloud of human desperation has engulfed the beautiful plains of Shire Valley as the rage of heavy rains continues to roar across the country.

The valley, which comprises Chikwawa and Nsanje districts, is experiencing the worst wave of flooding since 1997.

As of yesterday, in Chikwawa District alone, nearly 1 500 households had been rendered homeless, according to Frank Kadzokoya, an officer for the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma).

The figure, he fears, is likely to double by today as the two waiting safety camps that government put in the district, continue to experience, with each passing hour, troops of drenched hundreds running away from ravaged homes searching safety.

But the desperation is not just evident on the pale and hungry faces, pleading for a space in the tents that are already occupied.

In Chadula Village, Traditional Authority (T/A) Mulilima, four families are praying for the flooding waters to tone down so their dearest, trapped in the trees, should come.

“My wife and two children left for the garden early in the morning. I had other issues to attend to, so I did not join them. But sometime around 9 o’clock in the morning, I began to notice that Likhubula River was starting to swell. By the time I realised it were floods, the river had already spread its fury,” Austin Mwanyenga, a local in the village, told The Nation yesterday.

When The Nation visited Mwanyenga’s house at around 2pm yesterday, the mood among the six relatives we talked with was dark and eerily sombre. They were all praying that the worst should not happen to their relatives.

The worst they feared was the possibility of Mwanyenga’s wife and children being washed away by the flooding Likhubula River.

Their garden is perched between Likhubula and Shire River. When Likhubula floods, there is hardly a way out—just trees to climb and wait.

As we went to press, Mwanyenga—who kept calling this reporter to ask government officials for help on his behalf—confirmed that his wife and seven others were yet to get home.

However, wearing a brave heart, he insisted they might have found safety in the trees.

But even in that hope, Mwanyenga and hundreds of others in his village have tears trolling down their cheeks for they have lost to floods every crop they had grown.

“We are just looking to God for answers. I had a half-hectare of maize, two hectares of cotton and rice. All of them, just today, have been washed away. But my immediate worry is my wife. I am sure God will see me through this moment,” he said.

With no human death reported, only a case of a single person whose house fell on him and currently admitted to Chikwawa District Hospital, the scale of devastation of houses and properties is eluding many who see it as unprecedented.

While this reporter was interviewing people at Kadzokoya at Nchalo camp, village head Matsukombiya in T/A Ngabu was almost in tears, pleading with the Dodma official there to have his people given space at the camp.

His village—located just a kilometre away from the camp—could pass as one of the worst hit.

All roads to the village, which are used by an Illovo Sugar company tractor, have turned into a giant river, with water above one metre from the ground.

According to Matsukombiya, government officials visited them four days ago alerting them to leave the village as floods were imminent. Kadzokoya, too, confirmed it.

“We refused to go to the camps because there is a lot at stake in our homes. We have houses, livestock, properties, families and what have you.

“We are a village of 320 households. As of yesterday, 176 houses had already been washed away, 122 were partly fallen, but on the danger of collapse and 30 nursing cracks,” said Matsukombiya.

With the scale of the damage yet to be quantified and, again, supplies being overwhelmed by increased demand of those without homes, Kadzokoya fears for the worst, especially with rains showing no signs of abating. n