Editors Note: Six hours of non-stop rain bring city to standstill in Mozambique.
It started with a tap-tap-tap on the window around 3 AM. Half asleep, I thanked the rain as a blessing, a respite from the scorching heat we’ve been having in Maputo, up to 38 Celsius.
The tap-tap-tap became a steady, non-stop, six-hour-long downpour. By 8 am, chunks of the city were cut off. People could not go to work. In the Baixa, the financial centre downtown, by the bay, people were swimming with water at chest level. Muddy water flooded into banks and shops. Traffic stopped. Schools closed. The roads feeding workers into the city from their suburbs became congested traffic jams.
In just five hours on that early Wednesday it rained 110 ml in the city, with the Baixa recording 180 ml. The average rainfall in Maputo in January is 130 ml while yearly rainfall is 750 ml. The blessing had turned into a curse.
Wednesday is closing day at Savana, the weekly where I work. All deadlines went haywire. Journalists could not come to work. Editor Francisco Carmona braved the highway from the suburb of Matola but, upon seeing the traffic jam, he turned back and went home to sit the rain out.
Senior photogtpaher Naita Ussene went to the Baixa and returned with images of broad avenues of gushing waters and groups of stranded, wet and forlorn people.
In the poorer neighbourhoods, families piled up their few belongings on tables and beds. But the rich also suffered. Construction is shoddy in Maputo anywhere. In the leafy suburbs by the palm-fringed but derelict sea promenade, diplomats’ mansions had water leaks. Even their 4x4s could not negotiate the way into their offices through flooded streets.
The rain petered off around 10 am. The waters started receding slowly. Some 100 families had lost their homes and were sheltered at schools. Latrines had collapsed. Faeces floated in flooded streets.
Maputo’s drainage and sewerage system is, like its buildings, shoddy. Though the Baixa's drainage was rehabilitated not long ago, it cannot withstand heavy rains, especially when coupled, like this one, with high tide.
On Friday, reporter Salane Muchanga and I set out for the poor neighbourhood of Mafalane (pop. 22,000), where many streets were still full of stagnant waters.
People waded ankle- and knee-deep to enter their houses. Some had been sleeping on tables since Wednesday, the floors too wet to place a mat and mattress as usual.
Amos Mucondi struggled to keep his toddlers in bed all day so they wouldn’t walk in the yard, covered with 20 cms of dirty water and debris from the collapsed latrine.
Malaria and gastrointestinal diseases were the residents’ main concern.
“At night our feet are red and swollen from walking in this dirty water,” complained Berta Eulalio. Locals boil water with salt to soak their feet and ward off skin infections.
Around mid-morning it began raining heavily again. Neighbours groaned. We turned our taxi into an interviewing studio. People left their shoes and umbrellas outside and sat with us inside to tell their stories. When the rain eased, we continued interviewing outside. Salane turned out to be very deft at handling the umbrella while taking notes. Later she perfected the technique by getting the interviewee to hold the umbrella.
And so it was that the rains decided the topic of the second health story produced by Savana in the second week of my fellowship.