Mozambique flood victims ask only for land plots to restart their lives

At the Filipe Samuel Magaia Community School in Maputo province, which was transformed weeks ago into a reception centre for displaced persons, Abdul has no intention of returning to his flooded home. He is simply asking for a new plot of land in a safe area so he can try to start his life over. “My idea is for them to give us a space just to build and make our lives.

I’m not thinking of going back home,” asks Abdul Jossias, at the reception centre set up at that school, in the town of Estevele, Boane district, south of the Mozambican capital. Abdul, 42, recalls saving his family of six after seeing his house flooded in Mazambanine, Boane, and reports that he is experiencing flooding for the second time. A few years later, he finds himself once again sheltered in a centre for displaced persons, where he says there is a shortage of everything, especially food.

“The situation here is terrible, we are suffering,” he says, alongside friends who have set up a mobile phone charging station near a health brigade run by military doctors. Abdul Jossias wants this to be the last time he is taken in at a centre due to flooding, where there are dozens of tents for victims, and he is asking for a new space to build a safe home. “I had a hard time with the floods in 2023, and this year the same thing happened,” he recalls, his face tired, as he thinks about rebuilding his life again.

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Since the beginning of the rainy season in October, including the January floods, more than 200 people have died and over 845,000 people have been affected, according to official data. At the same centre, Joana Francisco, 36, mother of three, recalls that this is the second time she has been affected by the floods. In 2023, she saw the water take over her home and says she only survived because she was rescued.

“I am from the 2023 floods. I lost everything. When I was pulled out of the water, I passed over my house by boat when I was rescued, I didn’t recognise it.

I had nothing left, no trees, nothing,” she tells Lusa, recalling that that scene is one to “forget” and rejecting the possibility of going through the same thing again. In January, she saw her hometown of Estevele, in the district of Boane, being flooded again, with the area isolated by the waters. “We all ended up in the village, we left the village of Boane to come here and from here to the village, but I thought everything was fine because there were no deaths,” she explains, from the reception centre at the Filipe Samuel Magaia Community School.

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