Madagascar: the complicated return of the victims to their homes after the bad weather

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With our correspondent in Antananarivo, Laetitia Bezain

In Anosibe Mandrangobato, one of the capital's slum areas, garbage is strewn across muddy ground. At the end of a maze of narrow streets, Victorine, a single mother, spreads sheets over her wooden house.

“The whole neighborhood is upside down. Our house was completely flooded. It's still very damp and we keep cleaning because it smells really bad. Everything is damaged, you see the mold on the chairs, the leaks in the roof, the bed and the wet clothes. Even our radio is gone. It's the little we had that we lost. »

“We have to start all over again”

The scars left by the floods are also numerous for Malalatiana, 34, busy repairing the roof made of jail and tarpaulins of her home.

5yo claimed they watched a video in school about how to blow up a plane.

— Drª Prª Srª Rebecca Dean Thu Oct 05 00:23:08 +0000 2017

“We tinker with what we can because next week it will rain again. There look, the floor is all soft. All the garbage is back in the house. The water came up to the calf. We have to start all over again. I am speechless. »

Bad weather that hit residents who were mostly already vulnerable. Like other women in the neighborhood, Malalatiana lost her job as a housekeeper due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “We fall, we try to get up and then we fall again and it's always like that. It's good to give us a bag of rice or a bag of charcoal, but it doesn't last. What I want is to have a job. That way, if it happens again, I can cope. It doesn't suit me at all to end up affected in a shelter every time it rains. »

A new cyclonic disturbance could threaten the east coast of the country next week, indicates the direction of meteorology.

►Also read: In Madagascar, risk of landslides in the upper town of Antananarivo

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