Children in Mozambique start to recover from Cyclone Idai

“First, there were strong winds and a lot of rain, and then the floods came. I was so scared. The water came so fast,” Lusiana, 12, says as she recounts the night Cyclone Idai touched down in Mozambique and destroyed her home.

“My father told me to climb the tree. We all climbed the tree. There were other families in the same tree as us and we could see people sitting in other trees."

“We just sat there and waited. We waited for three days until a boat came. It was very cold. I was freezing and hungry. We did not have anything to eat."

“Some people in a boat came and took us here,” she says, referring to the camp where she now lives with her family.

Before the floods caused by Cyclone Idai, Lusiana, her father, mother and three sisters lived in an area a few kilometres away from the resettlement camp, where she attended school.

Today Lusiana is in a different school, close to the camp and supported by Save the Children. “I have had mathematics, Portuguese, social science and English today, all my favourite subjects,” she says. “I am 12 years old and in the fourth grade.” Lusiana says she wants to become a teacher when she grows up.

The school which Lusiana attends received teaching material, in addition to solar flashlights for the teachers to help them do lesson planning in the evening. Students received learner kits (10 exercise books, 2 pens, 2 lead pencils, 2 rubbers, 30cm ruler, bag, 1 metal sharpener) and hygiene kits.

Even though she says she likes her new school better than her old one, things are not the same. “I am happy to be here, but I miss our house and the life I had before.”

Save the Children is a member of the COSACA consortium with CARE and Oxfam, working in close coordination with the government and other agencies to support children and their families impacted by the disaster.

Along with ensuring schooling for Lusiana, the agencies also provided her family with a tent for shelter, food rations, household supplies, and maize seed for farming.

Lusiana’s life was saved, and now, bit by bit, it is being restored. She will have a lot to share with her own pupils some day.