For Kennedy Edyson, the floodwaters that came with Cyclone Jude washed everything away: his food, clothing, home, and also all of his family’s personal possessions.
He remembers being woken in the middle of that night, last March, as flood waters streamed into his house. A father of two from Nsanje in Malawi’s far south, he roused his wife and kids, as well as his grandmother and the two nephews who lived under their roof, and they quickly evacuated through waist-high waters, seeking higher ground.
Kennedy had seen it all before. Just a few years earlier, floods, high winds and mud slides caused by Cyclone Freddy had upturned the lives of more than 2,600 people in Nsanje. Regrettably, extreme weather events like this, caused by El Nino weather patterns, have become commonplace in recent times, he says.
‘Everything we own we are really only renting. It can be taken away from you at any point,’ he says ruefully.
Working alongside local NGO partners on an EU-backed Humanitarian Implementation Plan (HIP), Self Help Africa teamed up with a Nsanje-based organisation, Churches Action in Relief and Development (CARD), to provide multi-purpose cash transfers of MK 72,000 ($42) to close to 500 of the most vulnerable households, Kennedy’s included.
Kennedy used the money to meet his family’s most urgent needs, particularly food, and to invest in the future. He bought a pig that he expects will soon farrow and give him a litter of piglets, and four chickens. ‘My wife and I talked about it. The disaster left us in a desperate situation, but we also needed to think about the future.”
“There were days when I wished that I had even a single shirt that I could sell to buy food for my family. I could not stop myself crying,” he remembers. “Now, we are in a better place. I have strength, and I feel hopeful for the future.”
“The disaster left me in a desperate situation. There were days when I wished I had even a single shirt to sell just to buy food for my children. I couldn’t stop myself from crying. I now have the strength to feel hopeful about the future.” Kennedy shared.
