Mozambique (MNN) — The East African country of Mozambique suffered a direct hit from Cyclone Eloise in late January, killing 11 and displacing thousands. Severe flooding has damaged or destroyed over 17,000 homes in the central region of the country.
Simultaneously, Mozambique finds itself in the middle of a COVID-19 upswing. Cases and hospitalizations spiked sharply throughout the month of January, reaching over 900 cases a day. These numbers are by far the worst Mozambique has seen during the pandemic.
Eloise between Madagascar and Mozambique. (Photo courtesy of NASA, Public Domain)
Sphiwe, a Christian worker with Trans World Radio (TWR) says Mozambique was already recovering from another severe storm that hit in December: Cyclone Chalane. “The damage is quite intensive because [they came back to back], within a short space of time. According to statistics that we see online, and also from the partners that we have, over 90,000 people are displaced at this time.”
TWR’s ministry in Mozambique
TWR partners with a local radio station to distribute their programming in Mozambique. The station continues to broadcast, though many other communication avenues have been severely disrupted. Sphiwe says people need food, shelter, and resources to combat COVID-19, but they also need help dealing with the trauma of this disaster.
That’s where TWR’s programming comes in. The ministry has radio programming dedicated to helping survivors of traumatic events and natural disasters. Sphiwe says, “Let us pray that God can be within their hearts as they deal with their whole world changing. Because that’s what we are telling on the radio; when your whole world changes, there is still some peace that you can have, and that peace will help [you] to be able to reconnect and move forward.”
Pray the Holy Spirit will bring hope and healing to many in Mozambique.
The header photo shows flooding in Mozambique after Cyclone Eloise. (Photo courtesy of the World Meteorological Organization, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
