Mozambique - This is what climate change looks like: dramatic weather extremes, and the poorest paying the highest price. By Elijah Adera
As the floodwaters
slowly recede and cholera
breaks out here in Mozambique, I recall the iconic image of the mum
and her “miracle baby born in a tree” being winched from the branches above the
swirling flood waters in Mozambique almost 20 years ago. A similar
story has emerged in this crisis. Baby Sara arrived in the world in
the branches of a mango tree, mother Amelia also desperately clinging to her
two-year-old son. It took two days for them to be rescued. They survived.
Two mothers, a
generation apart, encapsulating the peril, terror and indignities suffered by a
nation at the hands of nature. Their daughters, Rosita, who all being well is
now a young woman perhaps with children of her own, and baby Sara, both arrived
into a world with scarce and inadequate health facilities, limited clean water,
food and shelter, and increased risk of violence within temporary shelters.
Can their treetop
births ensure the eyes of the world will focus on an impoverished country
devastated by natural disaster and with little capacity to recover? I wonder what else we
need to do to draw the gaze of the world back to this nation. Cyclone Idai has
affected nearly 3 million people across Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, with
more than 600 confirmed deaths in Mozambique alone. And now a second wave of
disaster has struck as cholera cases are climbing by the day, now almost 5,000
in Mozambique despite feverish efforts to bring emergency water, sanitation and
hygiene, and cholera vaccinations... read more:
