The Bridge Is Out

 This past week the city and surrounding area of Mocuba suffered severe flooding.  The Licungo River was at its highest level since 1971.  The level couldn’t actually be measured as the calculation equipment was submerged. The bridge, the only access in and out of the northern region, washed away.  The Peace Corps Volunteers in that section of the country have been without electricity and cell phone coverage for five days and still counting.

Meanwhile, I was dealing with my own challenges.  A very leaky roof left me in a perpetually damp house, small puddles pooling on my cement floor.  The rain also brought a plague of insects into my home, from which there was no escape.  When wiping down a wall to try to rid myself of the cobwebs that seemed to be forming by the hour, large pieces of the wall crumbled inward.  I had been warned my house would melt in the rain and now it was coming to fruition.  Challenges presented themselves daily and I wondered if I could survive another six weeks of rainy season.

Then, today, I travelled forty- five minutes to the nearest city.  When I had first arrived and saw this stretch of land between Quelimane and Nicoadala, I felt like I was on a movie set.    Fields of rice and vivid green vegetation stretched as far as the eye could see, outlined by tall palm trees.  Squat and lush banana trees shaded winding and worn dirt paths that disappeared into the tall grasses leading to picturesque mud and straw homes with thatched roofs.  Idyllic Africa.   Peering out of the dirty window of the public mini-bus, I couldn’t help but to imagine the daily life within as we passed by.

After a week of torrential downpours, this land was now a small lake.  Any houses that still remained were surrounded by, and partially submerged, under water.  Mostly there were just thatched roofs visible here and there and small piles of mud.  The straw buildings, most of which housed livestock or stored grains, listed dangerously to the side, just a few breezes away from toppling over.  And the fields of newly planted rice were nowhere to be seen.  Now I don’t know much about growing rice other than that they thrive in very wet conditions.  This was beyond wet.   I was told all the crops had been washed away and the people would be hungry in the coming months.

 What few personal belongings people had were now drying out, littered along the roadside.  A few pieces of fabric and clothes clung to trees, brooms and hoes standing upright, the poles rooted into the mud. People waded waist high in the water, travelling from their homes to the tarmac.  While I would like to think these were second homes to these families, inhabited only for the growing season, that is wishful thinking.  Most of the families have now left these homes and their crops and livestock, the past week of rain plunging them further into poverty.  Most likely they fled to live with relatives and will burden already financially strained households.

Those families hanging on, now living near and in the stagnant waters, are at a high risk of contracting malaria.  Preparing, storing and cooking food must be next to impossible.  In this part of the country, meals are prepared on outdoor fires.  Not only are the fuel sources now unavailable, but the very limited patches of land still existing are bogs, land unable to support a fire.  Living in a mud soaked house, with children and babies, seems impossible.  As our mini-bus passed by today, everyone was completely silent.  The desperation in those waters, once an abundant and fertile farmland, was palpable.  When we could stand to look no more, we turned our heads to look out the other side of the bus windows, as if the problem would go away.   We saw only more of the same.

Heavy rain is predicted this coming week.  And if that isn’t enough, a cyclone is headed to our region.  Peace Corps Volunteers have an organization supporting us, ready to evacuate and house us elsewhere, if needed.  To us, this is mostly adventure, an event to be remembered in our lives.  For the people here, and those that live in the flooded fields, this event is their life, a life changing event from which they may never recover.