‘I prayed for my family’

A round midnight, Edith Goliyati, 32, went to the toilet with her 11-month-old son, a decision she will forever cherish.

All day, heavy rains and winds induced by Tropical Cyclone Freddy had pounded her community on the steep slopes of Soche Mountain in Blantyre City.

While inside the pit latrine, she heard screams from the neighbourhood up the mountain and the roar of gushing water. She ran into her house to wake  up her husband and eight-year-old daughter.

 “I saw my husband going to our daughter’s bedroom to wake her up, but the mud and debris was now almost in our compound,”  Goliyati says.

In a split-second, she grabbed her baby and dashed outside again.

“I prayed that they would make it out before it hit the house,” she narrates.

The fast-moving mud hit the walls of her house, which crashed her husband’s legs as huge boulders from the mountaintop slammed into her daughter’s bedroom.

“Seeing my family in this situation was too much to bear, but I was too scared to come back to help as the debris was coming fast,” she recounts.

Goliyati reached safety further down the mountain and she waited at a roadside for her husband and daughter to reappear.

As she prayed for a miracle to happen, minutes turned into hours, but there was no sign of either of them.

Midnight stampede

While she was trying to understand what had happened to her family, people fleeing the landslide emerged and in their panic, trampled Goliyati and her son into the ground. Both lost consciousness.

“When I woke up, I was in a classroom with people gathered around me,” she said. “Some good Samaritans [had] rescued me when I passed out. However, my son was still unconscious.”

Transport was organised to take Goliyati and her son to hospital, where she received treatment as an outpatient. Her son was, however, admitted with breathing difficulties.

“While in the hospital, I was only thinking of getting better and for my son to wake up,” she said. “I dismissed other thoughts on what could have happened to my daughter and husband.”

When her son was discharged four days later, she made her way to Naotcha Primary School, where a temporary camp had been set up for those displaced by the disaster. Here, she ran into a neighbour, who told her that her daughter’s body had been found the same morning. 

“The news hit me hard,” she said. “The last time I saw my daughter, she had just finished doing her homework. And now she was gone, just like that.”

Goliyati learned later that her husband was still alive. He had received medical treatment at hospital for injuries to his legs and was staying with people in a township.

Naotcha Primary School camp, where Goliyati remains, is refuge to 1 062 women of childbearing age and 239 adolescent girls.

The Department of Disaster Management Affairs estimates that Cyclone Freddy affected about 4 500 women of childbearing age and 2,602 adolescent girls in Blantyre.

Urgent needs

Soon after the cyclone hit Blantyre, UNFPA deployed staff to the district and distributed dignity kits to affected women and adolescent girls.

UNFPA deputy representative Ezizgeldi Hellenov visited Naotcha Camp and described the situation as desperate.

Partners responding to the crisis should expedite crucial life-saving sexual and reproductive health services to help the survivors cope, especially women and girls, he said.

“As UNFPA, we know that pregnancies and menstrual cycles do not stop during a crisis, hence the need to support women and adolescent girls affected by the cyclone,” he said.

The UN in Malawi is mobilising more resources to reach out to other women and adolescent girls affected by Freddy.

As part of the response, UNFPA has procured 1 000 dignity kits, some of which have been distributed at Naotcha camp.

The kits include a 20-litre water pail, a cloth, soap, panties, toothbrush, toothpaste and menstrual pads. A further 4 000 dignity kits are to be distributed in Mulanje, Chikwawa and Nsanje districts, which were also affected by the cyclone.

In addition, UNFPA has procured 1000 solar torches, to be distributed to adolescent girls and women together with the dignity kits. n