Michael - Thursday
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| Beira, Mozambique |
Today is Human Rights Day in South Africa, a public holiday, and I'd meant to write about what that means to us here and what it's trying to achieve. However, to follow the title with
another biblical quote, “Man proposes, but God disposes". In the light of the staggering
human tragedy in eastern southern Africa, our efforts at equality seem somehow trivial.
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On 15th March—the Ides indeed—cyclone Idai struck the
Mozambique coast with gale force winds of 100 miles per hour, a storm surge of
20 feet, and torrential rain. More than 25 inches fell in some places. One always hopes for the best and prepares for
the worst, and on this occasion the worst happened and there wasn’t a lot of
preparation. The cyclone made landfall twice—first it drenched Malawi, then returned to the sea to recharge, and then hit Beira, Mozambique’s second largest
city and home to more than half a million people. According to the Red Cross
90% of the city is damaged or destroyed. In a statement, they said, "The
scale of damage caused by cyclone Idai that hit the Mozambican city of Beira is
massive and horrifying."
The area around the city is completely flooded. On Sunday a
large inland dam burst cutting off the last remaining road access to the city.
The people are stranded. Beira is now virtually an island.
The cyclone went inland causing flooding
wherever it went. Like much of rural
Africa, the usual concern is much more about drought than flooding, and so the
results were catastrophic. The president of Mozambique estimates that as many
as a thousand people may have died. The people are stunned, waiting to pick
up the pieces of their lives, wondering whether or not they can survive.
But Idai wasn’t finished. It headed west into
Zimbabwe—a country already struggling with economic woes. Widespread flooding
there has claimed many more lives. Houses have been washed away in
mudslides or simply collapsed under the winds and floodwaters. My gardener’s
house in Malawi was so weakened that one wall collapsed and the second bout of wind and rain flattened
the rest. One of his countrymen I spoke to just shrugged. “We can’t complain,” he
said. “God wills it. At least other people didn’t do this to us.” Some comfort, I suppose.
Latest reports suggest that around two and a
half million people may have had to evacuate their homes. It may well be the worst
natural disaster ever to devastate the southern hemisphere.
(The pictures are from the Washington Post.)
