ASSESSMENT REPORT TO DAMAGES CAUSED BY CYCLONE TO NKANDO AREA

The heavy rains coupled with cyclone caused heavy damages to Southern part of Malawi on 25th January 2022. Nkando area where Chingoli primary school is was not spared from it. This lead to the President of Malawi to declare the whole southern region of Malawi a Disaster Area with the intent to seek urgent aid to assist the affected households. As a follow up to the Board meeting resolution to urgently look at this matter, effort to get hold of the District Commissioner’ Office to provide statistics for Nkando area faced few hitches. This is the reason why Malawi team thought of making a site visit to assess the situation on ground. The visit was made on 4th February 2022. These are the findings according to each location:

1. CHINGOLI PRIMARY SCHOOL - OLD BUILDINGS

Two old school blocks developed cracks on the walls because of heavy flooding. Eyewitness said that the maximum water level it reached that day was slightly above windows. Thereby letting in water to drip in freely in those classrooms. You may recall that the windows for these building are open.

The flooded waters got into the school blocks, headmaster’s office and store-room thereby causing damage to the following:

1. Cracks on the school walls

2. All office documents plus archived students’ results were damaged

3. New school books and text books which were supposed to be shared from std 1- 8 got damaged

4. Various learning materials like flip charts, scheme pads , crayons etc got damaged

5. Special Needs Kids received a donation of learning barely a week or 2 before the floods happened and all of them got damaged as well plus existing materials they had then.

6. Toilets from this location got damaged and render them unusable Education Division Department instructed Chingoli school management never to use these old blocks anymore and relocate to the new school blocks. These old school block are not longer used by the school to teach lower grade kids and the special Needs children since they pose great risk to the life of the kids. This is the third time the floods have affected these blocks and this year’s impact was so heavy than before (these are the years 2015, 2019 and 2022)

One of block is now housing the villagers who had their houses got damaged. This block has two rooms. They are using a school block which looks much better than others. They are from Kalilima, Ntchemula, Likoto and Luwakhwa Villages. A total of 73 people sleeping on this school block:

Female – 55
Men – 18

It was discovered that no effort has been done from various stake-holders to help these people who are staying at this school.
These are several challenges the community leaving at school are facing:

Lack of food
Lack of beddings
No toilets
Lack of basic kitchen utensils

Adjacent to old school building blocks for chingoli school lies a Presbyterian Church. Chingoli school belongs to this Presbyterian church. The cyclone didn’t spare the church building and the church pastor’s house. You may wish to know that the church itself is also used as Examinations cluster Centre when kids are writing for National Examinations. It plays a crucial role.

In short the items damaged at the church are:
1. Church building
2. Church pastor’s house

2. THUCHIRA SECONDARY SCHOOL

Thuchira secondary School and Chingoli primary school new blocks were all built on the same campus and they do share resources to each other.

Our assessment found of that the secondary suffered from the damage as well. These include :
1. Two school blocks roofs got removed
2. Two teachers’ houses got damaged as well.The Education ministry together with their well-wishers they brought in 2 tents at Thuchira

Secondary to avert the problem of school blocks. Unconfirmed report says RED CROSS supported the school through the Ministry of Education

Below are tents donated to the secondary school:

3. CHINGOLI PRIMARY SCHOOL – NEW BLOCKS

All the kids who were learning from the old building blocks were relocated to the new school blocks. This movement have created less availability of new classrooms. The new premises has 4 blocks only with two rooms each. The rooms are not enough to carter for over 2000 pupils the school has for far enrolled. The school is conducting shifts , some kids come in the morning hours and other do come in the afternoon. The school is really needs urgent support for tents as well as chairs to accommodate all learning processes in normal hours.

A chat with the current acting Headmaster together with few teachers on the meeting we had revealed that one of the new school block is also housing flood victims. What happens is during the day break the villagers leave the school premises with all their stuff to create space for the kids to have lessons. They return late afternoon or evening to spend night in the one of the class-room. We did not manage to meet any of the villagers to hear their side of their story, they had already left the premises of the school.

The interface meeting we had with the school teams brought to light several things which need urgent attentions.

The school urgently needs tents, chairs and movable chalk-boards to ease congestions in the classes
There are also need for more toilets since more learners are using this new facility and more kids keep on coming to enroll. The available toilets are not enough for all the kids. Thanks to Gift of Givers for building two toilets otherwise the situation would have been unimaginable now.
Obviously some of the learners are coming hungry to school because some of them are affected by floods in their homes and have no or less food to eat. The appeal from school management was provision of food items to the kids’ parents so that they can concentrate in class
Text books and note books from standard 1-8
Pencils, pens, crayons, flip charts, pental markers , scheme pads , hardcovers etc
Sanitary baskets
Plastic chairs

4. JOHN MANAYE VILLAGE AND SEVENTHDAY CHURCH

Through our collaboration with the local community staying at Chingoli old school block. It was hinted that some of the affected parents are ar staying at the nearby Seventh day church. John Manaye is our the nearest village to chingoli primary and many kids from this area.

The team visited Nsamila Seventh Day Chuch. A lot of flood victims are staying at this church. A total of 318 people sleep inside this church hall. Statistics given by one lady who we chatted and stays there shows that this church is providing shelter to 86 families

Both male and female victims are sharing on the same room of the church. The ladies are sleeping on the right side of the picture above and men to the right with no proper demarcation. They are leaving in a difficult situation with no proper beddings. During the day of Fridays and Saturdays victims remove their stuff to safe places to give space for Adventist church goers to conduct prayers.

The statistics for victims staying at this church is as follows.

Total population – 318 people
Households (families) 86
Male – 120
Female – 198

The above figures include: under five kids, old women and men, pregnant women and those women lactating just to mention a few

The victims residing at Nsamila SDA church are facing several challenges

Lack of food items
Lack of sanitation. The toilets for this church got damaged this can lead to spreading out of the disease
Lack of kitchen utensils.
Tents are badly needed so that the female victims and male victims can be separated rather than all sleeping on the same church hall.
From our analysis we have noted that all flood victims are suffering a lot. No immediate attention was given these people since the floods occurred. They are in dire need of moral and material support.

5. RECOMMENDATIONS

After finishing visiting the affected floods victims and see with our eyes the suffering these people are going the following recommendations are:

Urgent provision of food supply to the victims is needed without delay
Sanitation has noted to be another thing of great concern. The victims don’t have enough toilets. Urgent action on this will avert the spreading out of disease which might cause more misery to the flood victims.
Provision of tents to all concerned parties (schools and communities) cannot stay without highlighting it.
Provision of basic kitchen items and buckets since most the victims lost these items
Provision of sleeping materials ie. Blankets etc

The list is too many to mention. But they need our prayers and moral support.

On a lighter note they thanked Annika Team for physically visiting them and offer words of encouragement. Both the school team and communities asked me to extent “THANK YOU MESSAGE” to you all ANNIKA TEAM from USA, Malawi, South Africa and Kenya