Luís Eduardo Bila is the community leader of Macarale in Mozambique’s Mabalane district, where the Red Cross distributes food. He surveys a field where families used to grow corn. According to Luís, his village lost many hectares of crops due to the drought.
“People here used to live off farming and cattle activities, but with the drought, agriculture is failing. It hasn’t rained. Since last year this area has a lost about 575 cattle heads. This happened over a period starting last September until about February this year. After that there was a bit of rain but it was not enough for farming.
If you go down to the river you’ll see how much lower the water level is. You don’t even need a boat to cross it. People are farming a little just by the water…not as we would like. They are getting water there (river) and pouring it directly on the plants so you could say it’s manual irrigation.
Right now, our community is in the process of building fences around the fields and some families are even ploughing the soil so that when the rain comes, they can plant their seeds.
Rain usually starts in October. We are now in a situation that is very very hard, so if on top of that rain doesn’t come, I can’t even imagine.
Its always the same song here, people are hungry. People always talk about hunger. That’s our day to day.
It’s challenging for some people to even get a meal. The students are missing school because they have to search for something to eat. They accompany their mothers to search for something to eat. Since we don’t have an irrigation system they also have to carry water from the river.
Anyone with cattle, goats, or even chickens, they can sell them to try to buy food. But if a family has nothing, maybe a neighbour gives them something. We Mozambicans have always had that spirit of helping one another.
But everywhere I go, everyone I speak to, I always hear the same song of hunger, always.”
