The Cyclone
Over the weekend of February 23-25, Mozambique experienced a cyclone. The dictionary defines it as a “violent, low pressure hurricane of limited diameter”. Here in Gondola, we woke up in the early morning hours of Friday the 23 to hear violent wind and rain. We ran around our house, closing windows. We woke up to continued pouring rain and heavy winds and no electricity. We prayed that Novencio (who carries our water) and Noemia (who does our housekeeping) would not come to work that day (they didn’t).We spent the day inside, brave enough only to go out on our verandas to look at the weather, collect water and open/shut our gate. Saturday morning most of the storm had moved on, but it was still raining, windy and we didn’t have power. By the afternoon, it had cleared off enough for people to be out and about. We walked to the little market near our house and stocked up on some food—mainly stuff to make pancakes! Sunday was clear until about 5 PM when the heavens opened and it poured off and on through out the night.
One of our friends said that they heard on the radio that Gondola had 90 KM/hour winds (= 41mph) and the southern coast of Mozambique had 250 KM/hour winds (= 114 mph). Our house sustained few damages from the winds and rain. Part of the plastic roofing on our back veranda is just hanging by a few wires, one of the windows broke when I was trying to close it and a few of the windows leaked. Our Mozambican friends are not so fortunate. Everyone’s houses are okay; but their fields are leveled. Corn that was 7-8 feet tall is knocked over. It’s almost harvest time, so some anticipate allowing it to dry on the ground, but they won’t have as plentiful as a harvest as they were expecting. Their fields are their livelihoods and so a storm like this greatly affects them. We don’t know how much this will affect them, but they are pretty disappointed by the leveling of their fields. Other places in Mozambique apparently have been destroyed. We haven’t heard any news but if they had 114 mph winds and rain, some destruction occurred.
In the meantime, because of rains up-river, the Zambezi River is flooding. This weekend’s cyclone, I’m sure doesn’t help the flooded areas.
It’s hard to know how to pray and what to do. So we pray for guidance and wisdom and wait out power-outages.
(written by Jenny on Monday, February 26, 2007)
Over the weekend of February 23-25, Mozambique experienced a cyclone. The dictionary defines it as a “violent, low pressure hurricane of limited diameter”. Here in Gondola, we woke up in the early morning hours of Friday the 23 to hear violent wind and rain. We ran around our house, closing windows. We woke up to continued pouring rain and heavy winds and no electricity. We prayed that Novencio (who carries our water) and Noemia (who does our housekeeping) would not come to work that day (they didn’t).We spent the day inside, brave enough only to go out on our verandas to look at the weather, collect water and open/shut our gate. Saturday morning most of the storm had moved on, but it was still raining, windy and we didn’t have power. By the afternoon, it had cleared off enough for people to be out and about. We walked to the little market near our house and stocked up on some food—mainly stuff to make pancakes! Sunday was clear until about 5 PM when the heavens opened and it poured off and on through out the night.
One of our friends said that they heard on the radio that Gondola had 90 KM/hour winds (= 41mph) and the southern coast of Mozambique had 250 KM/hour winds (= 114 mph). Our house sustained few damages from the winds and rain. Part of the plastic roofing on our back veranda is just hanging by a few wires, one of the windows broke when I was trying to close it and a few of the windows leaked. Our Mozambican friends are not so fortunate. Everyone’s houses are okay; but their fields are leveled. Corn that was 7-8 feet tall is knocked over. It’s almost harvest time, so some anticipate allowing it to dry on the ground, but they won’t have as plentiful as a harvest as they were expecting. Their fields are their livelihoods and so a storm like this greatly affects them. We don’t know how much this will affect them, but they are pretty disappointed by the leveling of their fields. Other places in Mozambique apparently have been destroyed. We haven’t heard any news but if they had 114 mph winds and rain, some destruction occurred.
In the meantime, because of rains up-river, the Zambezi River is flooding. This weekend’s cyclone, I’m sure doesn’t help the flooded areas.
It’s hard to know how to pray and what to do. So we pray for guidance and wisdom and wait out power-outages.
(written by Jenny on Monday, February 26, 2007)
(Additional note: We apologize that it has taken over a month to put this post on line. Our internet connection is very slow so haven´t been able to post it. The picture is a "normal" sunset out one of our windows)
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