Non-economic impacts of cyclones in Malawi

Chrissy Lingson, 19, was afraid to go back to school after Cyclone Ana induced floods destroyed her Kanseche Village in Chikwawa District.

The three-day torrential rainstorm forced Mwanza River to break its banks, shattering 482 houses in this part of Traditional Authority (T/A) Lundu on the night of January 25 2022.

The displaced girl’s family of four and 2 380 other people fled on January 26 to an emergency evacuation camp set at Dala Village in T/A Maseya.

Like other survivors, Chrissy escaped with only the clothes she was wearing on the night of the tragedy.

“If it were not for the trees, we could have been swept to the grave,” the teen girl recalls. “Water was everywhere. My parents helped me and my siblings to climb a tree. It was heartbreaking to see from up there the floods damaging our home and washing away our possessions, including livestock.”

The girl says she is still haunted by the sight of the surging floods crumbling homes and animals gasping for air as they were swept away. For the safety of school-going children, the Ministry of Education suspended classes for a day.

However, the Standard Six learner at Mwanza Primary School could not go to school for three weeks.

Chrissy says she was mentally shattered and lost interest in school.

“The floods took away my school materials, including uniform,” she recounts. “I was depressed to the extent that I did not feel safe going out of the makeshift shelters to play.”

Children who have experienced a natural disaster may suffer long-term physical, psychological and educational deficits, according to the Society for Research in Child Development. It further says that these children experience depression symptoms such as feeling sad or losing interest in activities.

One of the parents, Matinesi Thayo, says they could not allow children to go to school after the disaster.

“We had been displaced and floodwater was still above the classrooms’ window levels. We opted to wait much longer and see our children at the camp than sending them to school where safety was not guaranteed,” she says with a dejected face.

With all her belongings ruined, Chrissy adds that she was psychologically tortured as she struggled to manage her menses at the congested camp.

Before escaping the disaster, like other rural poverty-stricken girls, she improvised pieces of old clothes as her sanitary pads were lost to the floods.

“I was ashamed and in pain for struggling to manage my menstrual periods. I was not free to partake in public life,” she says.

Thayo adds that they were stressed by the challenges of managing the natural biological process.

With their land submerged, the displaced Kanseche communities were given a safer settlement in T/A Maseya.

But the village’s secretary Pilirani Mailosi says they are struggling to rebuild their lives as the misfortune crumbled their lives into poverty.

The households lost everything and were reduced to beggars a blink of an eye.

“We [men] lack confidence, and struggle to take risks to improve the lives of our families again because we fear losing gains to floods and other climatic shocks,” he says.

They stay in makeshift shelters at the new place. Stenala Jimu, the area’s chairperson, says they cannot sprout from zero without holistic support.

Due to gender norms, women, children and girls have no peace of mind as the place has no safe drinking water. Malawi Red Cross Society drilled two boreholes for the population of 2 380, but the communities claim the water is ‘too salty’ for drinking.

Patricia Kachiya says they endure lengthy and multiple trips to fetch drinking water outside the village daily.

“This is a burden and source of worry among women, children and girls,” says the mother of eight. “We lose energy and six hours collecting water from Dala, Misiri, Mafuwa or Kaphiri villages. The long trips with water buckets weighing down our heads cause physical pains.”

The 45-year-old woman says she is always worried about not having time to manage her home well and take care of the children.

“The situation supports our struggle as we do not even have enough time to plan on how to recover from the tragedy with much energy lost on getting drinking water. Now I also suffer from high blood pressure,” she says.

The poor tend to suffer the worst consequences of climate change in a ‘poverty-environment trap,’ according to Crises of Inequality, 2022’s United Nations (UN) Research Institute for Social Development flagship report.

Reads the report: “Low-income households are likely to be located in or near flood-prone areas, to be displaced due to weather-related disasters and suffer from climate impacts because their livelihoods are directly dependent on agriculture.”

Mailosi saysd the mental and physical health impacts of the tragedy frudtrate thgeir desire to curb poverty.

This story was produced with support from International Institute for Environment and Development.