Conger

The Diocese of Niassa is providing emergency assistance to villagers in the Zambezi River valley after spring floods in Northern Mozambique forced 170,000 people from their homes and left 20 dead.

The USPG reports that its mission companion, the Rt. Rev. Mark van Koevering, Bishop of Niassa and the diocese have been distributing mosquito netting, plastic tarpaulins to provide shelter, water purification tablets, and clothing to those displaced by the floods.

“We wanted to show that our church cared,” the Bishop said. “We had planned to help just 200 families, but with hard work and careful budgeting, many more than this have been assisted.”

Bishop van Koevering stated that one priest, Padre Albano—who has founded 16 churches in the past two years—lost his home to the flood, despite being 200 metres from the river. The village well was also destroyed as the polluted flood waters collapsed its walls

“Padre Albano’s request is for prayer, for his congregations and the communities of the Shire area of Zambezia, as well as for himself and his family. Please do pray,” the bishop wrote.

The 2,574 km-long Zambezi, Africa’s fourth largest river, flows through Zambia, Angola, along the borders of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, to Mozambique, where it enters the sea. The river has flooded its banks four of the last seven years, prompting the Mozambican government to urge villagers to move to higher ground.

However, the Zambezi flood plain provides the livelihood for the peasant farmers of the region. New planned government villages above the flood plain are on land less fertile, and require greater labor and more land to support the villagers.

“We can’t encourage people to move to higher ground if you don’t offer an economic alternative,” said Chris McIvor, country director for Save the Children UK told the UN’s IRIN news service.

In November Save the Children UK organised agricultural giving farmers vouchers to purchase £8 of seeds and tools from local merchants. However, the new floods have destroyed the newly planted crops. The NGO said it would be encouraging displaced farmers to take up new trades—fishing, carpentry, craft making—so that the local economy would not be held at the mercy of the river.

The Church of England Newspaper.