‘I don’t know how we survived’

Entrepreneur Robert Khembo, who has lived for over 25 years in a mansion that stood tall in his Chilobwe Township neighbourhood in Blantyre, cannot complete a sentence without THANKING God.

He cannot believe that God has spared his four-member family from the mudslide that washed away a number of houses in his neighbourhood.

Amid sobs, Khembo recalled noticing a rise in the water level in the stream that passes near his house on Saturday night.

However, he said it never occurred to him that the seemingly harmless stream would swell to disastrous proportions.

Today, his house stands as an island surrounded by mud, rocks and huge trees that were pushed down from the Soche Mountain by the force of nature induced by Tropical Cyclone Freddy at dawn yesterday.

Khembo recalls that one of the children in the house alerted the parents of the violent sounds coming from the swelled stream which had brought down the perimeter fence and filled their swimming pool with mud.

He said: “Then we heard distress calls from a girl who was swept by water from one of the neighbourhoods. She was shouting: ‘Mayi Khembo ndithandizeni! Kodi mukufuna ndifere pakhomo panu! [Please, rescue me Mrs. Khembo! I shouldn’t die in your compound!].”

Khembo said the family found the girl stuck in the door protectors. The family gave her shelter until break of day when ambulances ferrying the injured to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital came on the scene.

He said he could not tell whether the other members of the girl’s family had survived.

A walk in Khembo’s house, which undoubtedly served as a protective shield of the houses on the slope, shows some corridors covered with mud and water.

But Khembo is not concerned with the damage the rear side of his house has suffered. He only counts himself blessed to be alive.

“I am failing to understand how a window pane managed to stop the mud. I am failing to understand how a mere door protector stopped mud that swept away entire houses. All I can say is that God saved us,” he says.

While Khembo is thanking God for the salvation, many have not been as lucky. The disaster has affected entire families. In some cases, entire families are missing.

Richard Duwa, whose sister-in-law and a family of five were missing at the time of the interview yesterday afternoon, said they were hoping to find them alive.

He said only one family member, a boy, was recovered at the time of the interview.

“We are currently making arrangements to check at the mortuary because we understand a few more bodies have been recovered downstream,” Duwa said.

As the ambulance and police sirens wailed as they took the dead and the injured to hospital, residents gathered at the accident spot to see the impact of Cyclone Freddy which as of last evening had claimed 99 lives, according to the Department of Disaster Management Affairs.