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Looking for the hungry

THLATHLENE, (Mozambique): A group of hungry villagers looks up at the helicopter circling overhead, more in hope than expectation.

Like many Mozambicans, the people of Thlathlene, in the Limpopo delta, have been waiting for food aid for more than a month.

There are so many in need that it is hard to know where to start, says helicopter pilot Mark Jackson, who works at the Mission Relief Coalition Camp for displaced people.

"There are hundreds of people scattered along the riverline of the Limpopo who haven't had any food since the beginning of the floods," he adds.

Residents fled Thlathlene when the floods came, but started returning a week ago. The corn that is left is mostly rotting, but is being eaten, as well as local fish.

The chief of the village has reported symptoms of malaria in a number of people. Some children are obviously malnourished, with bloated stomachs and balding scalps.

Many flood survivors say they are hungry, but refuse to kill the cows and goats that suived the escape to higher ground.

"People were usually poor here anyway, before the floods" said a World Programme representative. Livestock represents their only asset.

But it is hard to get aid through to these people Ñ the floodwaters have left a million "interior seas" in the Limpopo delta which make landing anywhere a virtual impossibility.

In the nearest large town Chibuto, at a camp run by a coalition of Christian groups, a helicopter uses displaced people to guide it to semi-flooded hamlets where families are trapped. Deliveries are then made according to availability and need.

Every day another village is "discovered," making the list of the needy even longer.

Amongst the homeless in Chibuto are Sophia Pedro and her daughter Rositha, the baby who was born in a three while waiting to be airlifted from danger.

Sophia now sleeps in one of the rare solid buildings in the camp.

"I am okay here, but I have nowhere else to go," she says. The village she hails from was destroyed by the floodwaters.

Luckily for her, donations for her and her daughter have been generous Ñ so generous that when all this is over, Sophia is planning to make her dream come true: she is going to build a "two-roomed brick house with a tin roof".ÑAFP