Chokwe District, Mozambique – I’ve been reporting on climate change for most of this month. It wasn’t planned – it ended like that. During a routine deployment to Kenya, I headed to the Kenya-Somalia border in the town of Mandera to report on the drought.
At the time, there was virtually no international news coverage of this drought in the Horn of Africa. I wasn’t expecting anything dramatic. I was wrong. The drought is serious.
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As soon as we got into some very remote areas of Mandera County, I started seeing signs that something was wrong.
The team crossed several dry river beds. The camels were thin. Next we saw the communal cemeteries where dead livestock had been dumped and burned.
I spoke to a local leader in Mandera, Adan Molu Kike. He was a quiet, unassuming older man who went out of his way to explain to me how devastating the recent drought was.
“Our animals started dying in July last year, and they are still dying,” he told me. Then he asked me what country I came from. I told him Zimbabwe.
“Have you seen such a severe drought in your country? he asked me.
We were moving with a team from the Kenya Red Cross. They were keen to show me more about how the drought was affecting communities.
Water was the biggest challenge. Several rivers were dry, so water had to be brought in every week by humanitarian agencies. Some communities received water once a week. Others saw the barrels of water arriving twice a week.
There is usually a schedule. If you miss a delivery, that means no water until the next delivery. The water – brown in color – must also be shared with the livestock.
I see Pastor Mohamed Hussein dragging two containers of water that he has just collected from the water tank delivery truck. He looks tired and doesn’t seem like he wants to chat, but he makes us happy.
“I had 100 animals, but now I only have 20 left… My crops in the fields have died,” he says.
We talk about the drought and the water situation. He says three of his goats died the night before. He says it’s because of the drought.
Hussein insists on showing me the animals in his garden. He drags one away and throws the dead goat into a bush. I remember thinking that here in the desert, like in Mandera, it’s survival of the fittest.
Still, people can’t cry for too long over dead livestock. He must keep the few people he has left alive, otherwise his family will go hungry.
From extreme drought to massive floods
As journalists, we arrive in a country, file our reports and return home. But some experiences stay with you. This drought thing did it.
I left Kenya and returned home, thinking that my work reporting on climate change had been completed for at least a few months. I was wrong.
I got home and found out it was raining a lot. Some places in Harare, Zimbabwe even experienced flash floods. I didn’t think about it – just that it was interesting coming from a very hot climate to a humid climate.
Then, the next day, news began to circulate of flooding and very heavy rain in South Africa and Mozambique.
As journalists, we never really disconnect, which is why I was keeping an eye on the floods in southern Africa, but I didn’t expect to be deployed so soon into another climate change crisis.
A day or two later the situation got worse and I was heading towards Mozambique.
Again, at the time, there was not much international media coverage of the Mozambique floods. South Africa then attracted more media attention. So I had no idea of the extent of these floods.
I landed in Mozambique and visited a district of the capital, Maputo, affected by flooding.
I put on my rubber boots and waded through the dirty, smelly floodwaters between people’s submerged houses. I was shocked – but nothing prepared me for what I later saw elsewhere in the country.
In Marracuene, I saw a huge submerged toll booth and road signs protruding out of the water along a major highway. The highway was now several meters deep underwater.
Next we had Xai Xai, the capital of the southern Gaza province. Swathes of agricultural land were underwater. Parts of Xai Xai town were submerged. Downtown restaurants, stores and businesses remained underwater.
“Now first the water has to go down, and then we have to start cleaning up,” said Richard Sequeira, the captain of the boat showing me the devastation. “There are a lot of snakes and animals around. Maybe in 45 days to two months we will be out of our homes and living like this.”
He’s right. It could take weeks for the water to recede and disappear. But flooding could increase in the days or weeks to come.
Authorities in the neighboring South African province of Mpumalanga have ordered people to immediately evacuate flood-prone areas. The dam there is full and could start releasing water.
Mozambique is downstream. This means that all of this water will be channeled to already flooded communities. An Al Jazeera reporting team might be back here.
