More than 40,000 people have been dislodged by the bad weather that have made at least 443 deaths in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
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Spiwe Mtseko runs through soggy sandblasses in the manner of an archaeologist. “There were houses here,” he says progressing on the wet ruins of Mega Village, an informal district of the outskirts of Durban, South Africa. Located near a river, the slum was hit hard by the bad weather that have made more than 440 deaths and 40,000 displaced since a week in this KwaZulu-Natal region, open to the Indian Ocean.
The river that engulfed the small city withdrew at a hundred meters below. With a view of an eye, 300 houses were destroyed according to Spiwe Mtseko, an unemployed father who represents the inhabitants of the neighborhood. These live in shacks, as are called these small barracks made with corrugated sheet metal plates. The rudimentary aspect of the outside sometimes hides interiors and comfortable interiors. Faux brilliant floor, microwave, refrigerator equipped with an ice cube machine, table hanging on the wall and flat screen: the Milton Sibiya shack was the cocoon of a life of labor.
“You see how much I lost?”, “he calls, scrolling photos on his phone. “If I do not say stupid, we approach the 100,000 rands” (6,000 euros), he laments. The feet paved with flip flops and a hand shovel, Milton rids the mud of the false floor. It is protected from the rain by a sheet of sheet that still stands. His house was eventd. Tonight, he can sleep in the common room which has been converted for disaster people upstream of the neighborhood in one of the hostels, these collective homes, with shared cooking and sanitary, where the poorest populations traditionally live.
single meal
In the Durban area, the authorities have opened 17 shelters like that of Tehuis Hostel. The latter built in the early 1980s, has 4,000 beds and is already overcrowded. It is not in rooms but in a dormitory without beds that displaced mega village found refuge. “One can not ask them to leave, explains Sonwabile Spamla, the representative of the tenants of the Hostel. We are waiting for the city to come to help them. But it’s dangerous for them to return there.”
A hundred women and children are piling up in a low ceiling room. Men live separately for security issues. The light scarcely penetrates and the air circulates little. Only the lucky ones have a mattress, the others are sleeping on the soak concrete floor. A woman coughs in a corner of the room. FUNDISIWE MBILI, 28, has sinus problems. “It’s cold, when I wake up I have a stuffy nose. But I have no choice, I have to sleep here.” She entrusts. In his flight, she could not tear out a blanket at the river that he needs to share with her son, mother and two little sisters.
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