Relief effort

We have returned a number of times to Manyonyo during the week, and fortunately the sun shined and the rains stayed away which meant the flooding subsided, and selfishlessly the journey there got easier. At the start of the week the work was more assessment and trying to form small community teams so that they could report on the current problems caused by the flooding, as well as better inform the local council when any future disasters occur.  We also asked groups of locals to draw maps of the seven settlements that have been affected - this naturally caused much lively debate of where to place houses, land, schools, clinics etc.  Towards the end of the week the cavalry arrived in the form of tents, chlorine and mealie meal for the community; all these items had to travel by cattle and cart for the last 5kms because any vehicles would have got stuck.

Part of my role during the week has been to analyse all of the information that we collected, probably because I seemed to be the only one remembering to collect the data and also I have a laptop. So here are a few facts:

• we counted 250 homes had collapsed affecting over 1,000 people
• 585 cattle have been displaced with the main concern being the spread of footrot
• over 1,000 chickens have also been affected due to collapsed homes
• whilst it was difficult to measure the impact on the land much of the maize was dying due to the flooding.