Victims of Cyclone Freddy complain about the lack of assistance in Mucuácua, Massinga district: "There's no one to help us, we don't even have anything to eat!"
Fátima José Marcial Pinhal is 42 years old and lives in Bairro Malamba, in the town of Mucuácua, Massinga district, in Inhambane province. Fátima is one of the victims of Tropical Cyclone Freddy, and explains the drama she experienced on the night of February 24.
"It all started around 4am on February 24th! It started to get very windy and a very heavy rain started to fall, the roof of one of our houses collapsed, and suddenly we saw three of our coconut trees fall. It all happened so fast! All these houses were pushed by the wind and fell down, our food, clothes, beds and everything got wet from the rain, we couldn't remove anything, we don't have the strength." Sorry!
"We had to run to my brother's house to ask for a place to hang the clothes that got wet in the rain." He added.
Fatima has been a widow since 2020 and is the mother of five children. She currently lives with her 80-year-old mother, along with her sister. However, they each had their own hut where they slept with their children, but with the misfortune brought by cyclone Freddy they are all forced to sleep together in a one-room hut, which fortunately escaped the cyclone's fury. Fatima is starving.
"Our children don't have anything to eat, since the cyclone came through we've been up all morning, we have nowhere to sleep, all our huts have been blown down by the storm.
wind and fall, it rains here every day!
"We have nothing to eat, all the food we had in the house and in the barns got wet. We've lost everything we had in the field, and we've lost all the food we had in the house."
Due to the condition of the access roads, the lack of transportation in the town of Mucuacua could lead to an outbreak of acute diarrhea. "We don't have transportation to take us to the hospital, we have children with diarrhea, but no way to get to the hospital. The children cry every day here and our fear is that there will be no transmission here at home." I said.
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