Anglicans Caught in Devastating Floods in Mozambique
Episcopal News Service. March 9, 2000 [2000-051]
(ENS) Members of Anglican churches are among the nearly one million people affected by the devastating floods in the impoverished south African nation of Mozambique.
"We are devastated and we need help now," Bishop Dinis Sengulane said in a telephone conversation with Jim Rosenthal in the London office of the Anglican Communion. "People have no homes, no food and even no Bibles -- everything had to be left behind," the bishop said. "The hospitals are overcrowded with people sleeping on the floors. They are suffering from cholera, meningitis and deadly malaria. It is an awful sight. I have seen it with my own eyes."
In a report to the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief in New York, he said that people continue to flee their homes. Several priests are missing and houses and churches are completely under water. The fund sent a $25,000 emergency grant to the Diocese of Lebombo and additional funds will be sent as they are received and the needs are more clearly identified.
Sengulane also reported that the church's archdeacon is missing from a city where the "new church is under water and the priest has lost everything." One priest reported that 25 people who had lost their homes were crowded into his modest rectory.
While international aid and rescue efforts are finally beginning to relieve some of the pressure, "the loss of life and infrastructure, including roads, will be a tremendous setback for a country that was one of the most successful economic stories of 1999," said the Rev. Willis Logan of the National Council of Churches Africa Office. "The real work will start after the water recedes," he added. "That's when we'll see the full extent of the destruction. Restoration needs will be enormous."
Food was finally reaching people who endured days without any nourishment, often trapped on rooftops or even in trees. Until the roads are rebuilt, however, airlifting food aid will be slow and very expensive.
Britain and the United States are considering proposals that would cancel a portion of the country's crippling foreign debt. One of the poorest nations on earth, Mozambique owes about $88 million to creditors and another $30 million to international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Bishop Thomas Shaw of Massachusetts, who is serving a Congressional internship, joined Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, House Banking Committee chairman Jim Leach, and leaders of relief agencies in a call for debt relief.
While churches, relief agencies and governments respond with emergency aid, "It is our hope that Congress will do what it can -- go one step further for Mozambique by relieving its international debts," he testified. "Mozambique and a dozen other poor countries will soon qualify for an international plan for debt relief, freeing up millions of dollars for each country to build better schools, provide better health systems, build roads to get goods to markets...or rebuild after flooding that has left a million people homeless. For Mozambique, debt relief means flood relief," he said.
After explaining the biblical concept of Jubilee, which calls on God's people "to allow the land to lie fallow, to set slaves free, to return land to its original owner and to cancel debts," Shaw added, "We must seize this historic opportunity to take moral action, grounded in Scripture and our compassion for those in need. We must seize upon this unique moment, while the rest of the world is poised to act, while there is an immense intentional grassroots movement for debt relief, and during this year 2000 -- considered a year of Jubilee by many -- to make this a reality."
Government officials in Mozambique estimate that it will cost at least $65 million to reconstruct the flood zone, which lies in the most heavily populated and productive area of the nation. In the meantime, it pays $1.4 million in interest each week on a debt incurred during the Marxist era of its history, part of its legacy of civil war.