Severe flooding affects ALMA Partners

Our partners in Mozambique have alerted us to intense flooding. 80 people have died with over 150,000 displaced to temporary camps.

Please keep Mozambique in your prayers. ALMA (Angola London Mozambique Association) has made an immediate donation of £2,000 to assist with church based flood relief.

Anyone wishing to make a financial contribution can do so via ALMA: cheques payable to London Diocesan Fund (ALMA-floods). Please add a note if you wish to direct your donation to Lebombo or Niassa. Using Gift Aid, if applicable, will add 25% to the value of your donation. An ALMA Gift Aid form can be downloaded (pdf).

Sheenagh Burrell our diocesan Co-ordinator for ALMA has summarised below some of the news we have been receiving:

• In Maputo a thousand homes were destroyed along with some schools, roads, sewage and water distribution systems and some electricity sub stations
• Flooding along the Limpopo river basin has been devastating – as huge as the floods of 2000. A red flood alert has been in place with compulsory evacuations in force as the flood surge moved along the river. Chokwe was completely inundated last week. Agencies, co-ordinated by the UN, have been struggling to get assistance to communities underwater since then.
• Marie Conselee Mukangendo, of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, said the Chikahalani camp alone is holding an estimated 65,000 people but has only 28 latrines. She called the situation dire and said the U.N. would appeal for $65 million in relief aid on Wednesday [30 Jan]
• The scale of the flooding means the agricultural land and crops have been destroyed and the risk of malaria is very high.
• Bishop Dinis has shared that the church is trying to assist in very practical ways including: provision of mosquitoes nets, seeds, school materials, household items and soap.
• The extreme rains are also affecting river basins in the centre and north of the country with the deluge expected to swell the Zambezi river basin. The diocese of Niassa reports news of flooding in Morrumbala, Dere and Shire

The ALMA London facebook page is regularly updated on the floods and with news from our partners in Mozambique.