Tropical Cyclone Freddy remains as fresh as a newly dug grave in the minds of people from Mulaeza, Kamoga and other villages in Chikwawa District. This is because they see a direct connection between the natural disaster and the hunger that forces them to survive on mangoes and wild tubers. As Thomas Kachere writes, there is, indeed, a thin line between living and surviving.
According to LanGeek, “Living” is a choice to not just “survive” and involves being fully emotionally available to yourself and engaged in a rich life.
It states that “surviving” can mean continuing to live after a dangerous situation, the death of someone or the end of an event.
Using this definition, one cannot fault Yvonne Zozo of Mulaeza Village when she says she and other community members are surviving—literally so.
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Zozo says ever since the events of March 2023, when Tropical Cyclone Freddy made landfall in Malawi, killing people and livestock, displacing thousands and destroying property, her life has never been the same.
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“Hunger has become frequent, largely due to climate change-related dry spells that have become an integral part of our lives,” she says.
Zozo reveals that, as of now, they do not have food—the staple maize, rice, sorghum or other crops.
“We are now depending on mangoes. That is how we are surviving— cooking porridge made from mangoes and sharing it among ourselves. To make matters worse, we cannot afford maize because we do not have money. Our source of livelihood, farming, has been disrupted.
“As such, our lives are being heavily affected. We cannot do otherwise but ask well-wishers to come to our rescue. Our children’s education has also been compromised because one cannot attend classes on an empty stomach,” she says glumly.
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Zozo is not the only one recognising the enormity of the phenomenon.
This year, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) described Tropical Cyclone Freddy as the longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record.
The phenomenon lasted 36 days after it crossed the Indian Ocean basin, starting off the coast of Northwest Australia before making landfall in southern Africa, where Malawi is located, in February and March 2023.
John had held the longest-lasting tropical cyclone record since 1994.
In terms of distance travelled, the WMO ranks Freddy second in the record books.
A WMO international committee of experts, working under the auspices of the Weather and Climate Extremes Archive, conducted a detailed analysis and verification of the distance and duration.
The organisation says the committee recognised Freddy’s duration of 36.0 days at tropical storm status or higher as the new world record for the longest tropical cyclone duration.
For that reason, Zozo’s lamentations are not arising out of a vacuum. She is not the only one crying out loud, though.
Annie Jusa of Kamoga Village joins the chorus of distraught villagers.
“I now make frequent trips to the Shire River, where I search for Nyika (tubers found in the river). To tell you the truth, people here do not have food and are struggling to find it.
“Men, women and even children are risking their lives by entering the crocodile-infested river to look for Nyika. We are doing this just to survive,” Jusa says.
Jusa Levinson of Mulaeza Village is one of the survivors of a crocodile attack in the Shire Valley district.
He says hunger is forcing people to take risky measures.
“One day, I was busy picking mangoes after plucking them from trees. A hungry crocodile came from nowhere and attacked my right leg. I shouted for help and fortunately, friends, who were a stone’s throw away, came quickly and used sticks to rescue me from the beast.
“However, the injuries I sustained have negatively affected me as I can no longer cover long distances on foot,” Levinson says.
These stories are giving Village Head Kamoga a headache.
He acknowledges that many households in his area are depending on mangoes.
“People are so poor that they cannot afford to buy maize. For years, the people have been depending on farming along the riverbank, but now their fields are submerged.
“Consequently, people have been killed and others have been injured while trying to find food in the river or along its banks,” Kamoga explains.
According to a Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee report, about 4.2 million people are facing hunger in the country.
This is because floods swept away property and crops, killing thousands of people, with some still missing to this day.
This comes against the backdrop that the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) rolled out the distribution of relief food assistance and cash transfers to food-insecure households with a target of reaching 4.4 million people.
Now, the number has risen to 5.7 million.
Although food has been distributed to people in various districts of the country, some still need food aid due to the impact of climate change.
Dodma Chief Disaster Response Officer Madalitso Mwale says the international community should consider Malawi, in terms of climate financing, because thousands of its citizens are still in the recovery phase.
“The agriculture sector has been heavily affected. There must be deliberate interventions to ensure that, even in the face of climate change, people should be able to have food despite flooding or prolonged droughts,” Mwale points out.
Perhaps it is high time parties to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change realised that people are losing lives and property due to the effects of natural disasters.
Needless to say, such people need urgent access to climate financing.
Failure to do so will certainly create challenges for some nations in meeting UN Sustainable Development Goal number 2, which encourages countries to end hunger by 2030.
Already, delays are forcing people like Levinson to brush shoulders with death almost every day. Lucky are those who live to tell their tale.
