Rescue to recovery: Idai in the eyes of a first responder

28 Mar, 2020 - 12:03 0 Views
Rescue to recovery: Idai in the eyes of a first responder An aerial view of Cyclone Idai hit Chimanimani

The Sunday Mail

Tatenda Macheka

I remember I was at home watching the news with my family.  I asked myself how the people in Manicaland were going to cope with the disaster that was all over the news. Little did I know that within a few hours I would be part of a group of first responders.

I received a call at around 10pm from my supervisor instructing me to pack my bag full of all the emergency essentials (emergency preparedness is the first training staff receive when joining the World Food Programme).

I then had to tell my family “duty calls”, and that I would be leaving them the next morning. This is the nature of my work, and the time had come to fulfill my mandate of saving lives. One of the first things I packed, after my camera, was my VHF digital radio for communication.

The next call I got was from the head of WFP’s media and communications division at headquarters in Rome who said, “Tatenda, we hear you are going to Chimanimani and Chipinge early tomorrow morning, are you ready for this task?”

At first, I didn’t answer; I had always admired my colleagues who rushed to help others in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and other hot spots around the world where there is conflict, hunger, famine, floods and war.

Now here I was, faced with the biggest test in my career. This all raced through my mind while I was on the phone.

“Tatenda, are you still there?” she asked again, to which I replied, “Yes, I’m ready, count me in!” The task ahead of me was huge. Mozambique was the first to be hit by Cyclone Idai, just before Zimbabwe.

My colleagues in Mozambique had already started rescuing and delivering food, medicine, and they were updating me with real-time information in a group chat.

The first stop was at the Provisional Administrator’s office in Mutare, to get an update on the situation. I remember the names of the affected communities: Ngangu was one of the worst affected, Kopa had been swept away, Skyline, Wengezi, Silverstream, Mutambara were cut off from the bigger communities. People needed food, medicine and shelter, and there I was: holding a camera in one hand and a backpack in the other.

“Are you here for rescue or tourism? Please, out of my way,” bellowed a certain gentleman who was co-ordinating the movement of everything at the Mutare aerodrome.

At 2pm, one of the biggest helicopters ever built was scheduled to touch down at the base, and was to take me to the epicenter of the cyclone. With my little knowledge of aviation, I had assumed it would be a light aircraft.

The majestic MI8 helicopter after landing in Chimanimani

I checked my phone for time. It had one bar of battery left and was about to die on me, since power lines had been cut off by the harsh winds. Next thing I knew, the deafening sound of the helicopter announced its arrival.

People say WFP is the biggest logistics organisation in the world, and watching that monster land, I believed them. It was built for war, I said to myself. “Yes,” one of the pilots replied, “it was built to fight hunger in such emergencies”.

Since WFP was stamped on the helicopter, and I was wearing my WFP vest and cap, the person who accused me of being a tourist rushed to me and said, “are you one of the pilots of this helicopter?” I told them that I was not, and that I had come to help deliver food and medicine to the affected communities.

After refueling, getting the co-ordinates of the affected communities and reviewing the local aviation regulations, we were up in the sky. Part of our cargo was for pregnant women who had had complications during delivery. I later on learnt one of the women and her baby survived, and she named the baby Faith.

As we flew over Chimanimani, I felt tears in my eyes. I recall flying over a graveyard there, with so many freshly dug graves.

As the helicopter touched down, I expected to see kids running to inspect it, as everyone was doing in Mutare. This time was different. I saw terrified faces.

As we were ushered across Ngangu, a place where more than 90 lives were lost in one night, I couldn’t believe what I saw. To think that this happened at night, when people were asleep, broke my heart.

Cyclone Idai devastated the road and bridge infrastructure in Chimanimani and Chipinge. This is one of the reconstructed bridges

One older woman rushed to me and asked me whether there would be another cyclone in the next 24 hours. I told her there wouldn’t be, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. In our culture, it is believed lightning always strikes the same place twice.

I came across a woman who had just lost her baby but had discovered its clothes in the rubble. She was so hopeful her daughter was alive. “Mothers,” I thought to myself. Unfortunately, she never saw her baby again, and those clothes were her only reminder of her daughter.

At this point, I told myself, that the best thing I could do would be to refrain from asking people what had happened to them during the cyclone, because I would be re-opening their wounds.

Deep down in my heart I felt something, I was sad. I thought of the family I had left at home, but I reassured myself that my family was safe, and these people needed WFP’s help, they needed my help.

I spent the next few days in the cyclone-affected areas helping and making sure that those back in Harare, Johannesburg, Rome and the entire world would know what had happened here. The information I gathered helped WFP fund-raise, and assist those in need.

Naturally, after this experience, Manicaland became my second home. The faces I saw just after the cyclone and now are different. It’s devastating to lose loved ones and livelihoods at the same time. Those affected by the cyclone have been resilient; they have picked up pieces of their lives and are working to put them back together thanks to the support by the Zimbabwean Government, donors and implementation partners.

A year later, the writer travels back to Chimanimani to check on the progress the community has made in normalising their livelihoods

WFP responded swiftly and innovatively during the Cyclone Idai emergency in these early months of 2019. Beginning with an initial rapid response that supplied 50 000 of the affected people with 90-day nutrition-sensitive food assistance in the form of specialised nutritious foods mainly targeted at the most vulnerable including children under-five and pregnant and lactating women.

In Phase 2, WFP and its partners provided a full food basket to 220 000 individuals in the affected districts and supported recovery activities.

It’s true that no mountain is too big or, valley too deep for WFP to reach. When such a disaster like Cyclone Idai hits, we are the first to arrive and the last to leave. We make sure that no-one is left behind, and we always start with the most vulnerable.

The WFP has distributed food baskets to 220 000 individuals in the Cyclone Idai affected districts

My experience responding to the cyclone seems like yesterday, but a year has gone by.  There are many heroes and heroines who will never be recognised for their tireless, dedicated work. These are the people of Manicaland. The neighbours who rushed the whole night to rescue their friends and relatives. Some lost their lives or limbs trying to help others.

It’s not very often I get calls from WFP headquarters, but last week  I received another call from the head of our media and communications division. This time she said “are you ready? We have another assignment for you, we want you to cover the same subject, climate change, but this time, the drought that has affected Zimbabwe.

My answer didn’t change. It will always be the same: “When do you want me on the ground?” These calls are a call to duty. This is the same story for many humanitarians around the world. We keep going, we do what needs to be done, because that is who we are.

At such a time when the world is facing a critical test our executive director, David Beasley, summed it by saying: “we can’t afford not to do our job, no matter what virus is knocking at our door.”

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