Rescued Mozambican Kids Wonder if Parents Survived

CHIAQUELANE, Mozambique — At last count, the names of 150 children spilled across the pages of the camp registry here, the whereabouts of their parents listed as unknown.

Narciso Valoyi, 11, is there near the top. No home. No parents. His only sister, just 15, is sick with malaria and battling for her life.

Narciso has the fever too. His eyes are swollen and red. He doesn’t talk much. Questions bring more tears than words.

“When the water came, I started running,” he said Wednesday with the encouragement and help of a friend. “When the helicopter came, my parents weren’t there.”

Rescuers snatched Narciso from a metal rooftop over the weekend in nearby Chokwe, a town on the Limpopo River lost to the devastating rains of the last three weeks. The rising waters, including a crest of more than 6 feet on Sunday morning alone, came within a body length of his bare feet.

But like the other flood orphans who have found refuge on this island of dry ground in devastated Gaza province, Narciso can only imagine what has become of his parents.

“When I dream, I dream about what it was like just to play and not worry about all of this,” said Maida Madlavane, Narciso’s 18-year-old neighbor, who had clutched the quivering little boy as they were hauled into the sky by rescuers. “I am also all alone. I wonder about my mother.”

The plight of the scared and lonely children of the Limpopo River flood plain is easily overlooked amid the chaos of this impromptu settlement set up in a chestnut grove several miles from the flood waters’ edge.

Tractors and trailers crowd the narrow asphalt access road. Wet and dirty clothes dangle from trees. Goats and cows graze in the knee-high grass. Two shallow wells, meant to serve 100 local families, are worked around the clock by an estimated 30,000 refugees from flooded areas where thousands are feared dead.

“I think this must be the end of the world,” said Fany Manjati, a minibus driver arriving at the camp Wednesday for the first time.

There is virtually nothing at Chiaquelane to attract such a wave of humanity--no shelter, scarce medical supplies and so little food that hungry refugees overpowered relief workers Tuesday to get at the first deliveries of flour and rice from the U.N. World Food Program. The food tent is now patrolled by a guard with a horsewhip.

What Chiaquelane has going for it is even more basic: its elevation. The town lies above the flood plain, putting it beyond reach of the river that everyone here has come to fear.

“These people won’t have to move again,” said Carlos Matussa, a local government official assigned the impossible task of managing the sprawling settlement. “The water will never get here.”

Authorities say the Chiaquelane camp sprang up overnight after weekend floods swept through Chokwe and inundated a refugee camp at nearby Mapapa. The thousands of inhabitants have arrived over five days, and there is no sign that the migration is abating.

“The river keeps getting higher, and the people keep coming,” said Paul Tyndale-Biscoe of the relief agency Oxfam, which has begun digging latrines and setting up plastic washing bins here. “The problem is that [the surrounding territory] has become an island. You can only get here by air.”

Aid agencies, rushing to keep up with the movement of people, are only beginning to cope with the problems. The World Food Program used three small planes and a helicopter Wednesday to deliver 30 tons of flour, beans and cooking fat to the oceanfront town of Beline, where the food must be hauled away by truck to Chiaquelane and other refugee areas.

The Red Cross, hoping to prevent a cholera epidemic at Chiaquelane, is preparing to transport fresh water from Macia, the closest big town. Don Atkinson of the Australian Red Cross, who fled Chokwe with thousands of others Sunday, said malaria is sweeping the camp. Antimalarial drugs have been in short supply at the makeshift clinic where one doctor and one nurse barely keep up with the lines of sick and feeble.

Laurence Chauke, a 36-year-old bank guard from Chokwe, has been camped underneath a flatbed truck along with 15 relatives since Sunday morning. They fled the town in the middle of the night in waist-deep water. Both his house and the bank where he works are now invisible from the air, he said.

Bebet, Chauke’s 16-year-old son, rested on a grass mat beneath the front axle, too weak to move because of malaria. Chauke complained that the rains have turned every puddle into a breeding ground for mosquitoes. He was feeding his son a porridge of rice, flour and sugar, but Bebet appeared none the better for it.

“We have no problem with all the people here. They are friendly,” Chauke said. “The mosquitoes and the rain are the problem.”

Among the children of Chiaquelane, Bebet ranks as a lucky one. He has a parent caring for him. Some of the flood orphans, barely old enough to walk, have been sent to a nearby Roman Catholic mission.

That way, authorities hope, they won’t get lost or forgotten in the turmoil of everyday survival.

The others fend for themselves. At nightfall, Narciso and Maida sleep in the grass, wondering what tomorrow will bring.

“I don’t know what I will find when I go back home,” Maida said of the day everyone here impatiently awaits. “Maybe I will find my mother.”