Cattle now occupy the road outside the Mozambican city of Xai-Xai, searching for food on the little land not taken over by floods that have also disrupted lives, desperate to get home, even if only in small boats. About five kilometres from the city, brothers Alexandre and Agostinho, emigrants in South Africa, have gathered their cattle, more than 70 cows and oxen, and are following the N1, in the middle of the road, once busy and now deserted, surrounded by water, with houses, warehouses and other buildings submerged around them. It is 5 p.m., and the two brothers, with their crooks in hand and the help of some children, have been looking for food for their animals since leaving Chicumbane, on the outskirts of Xai-Xai, southern Mozambique, at 6 a.m.
“Grazing cattle by the roadside is not normal, but because of the floods we are here, taking advantage of the grass by the roadside so that the animals can survive,” explains Alexandre Chambisso, 36, to Lusa. He sees these floods as comparable only to those of 2000, which also affected Gaza. Today, with an estimated 40% of the province affected by the January floods, he fears that “great hunger” is coming, starting with the animals.
“Even with these floods, many animals have died, also from hunger. We don’t know where we’re going, because the animals have already eaten all the grass and the water is still high here, so we don’t know what to do,” he says. At home, they did not escape the floods and lost everything from corn to ducks and chickens.
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The two emigrant brothers were on holiday for the December festivities, and when they were about to return to South Africa, the nightmare struck “suddenly”, with heavy rains uninterrupted for several days, which quickly caused the water level to rise. “And we’re still here. There was no point in leaving for South Africa and leaving the cattle here to suffer,” says Alexandre, a father of five.
While tending to the cattle, watching the sporadic passage of vehicles on Mozambique’s main road connecting Maputo to the north, his brother, Agostinho Mazuze, 57, comments on what he has seen there in recent days: “Something happened that we have never seen before (…) there is a lot of flooding, we have lost a lot.” With eight children at home, the two brothers take the animals along the road, keeping an eye on the little grass that remains between the tarmac and the floodwater. “Our feet hurt from walking,” he acknowledged, lamenting, “There is nowhere to put the cattle.” In a scenario where, for miles, “only the road remains,” he is concerned about the hunger that is to come, with lost crops and cattle without food.
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