Soon after narrating a heart wrenching account of the ferocious storm that snatched her other half and father of their three children, Opah Magodo rises from a roadside rock she has been sitting on and leaves in a haste.
This September morning marks the first time in five years that Magodo has opened up about the anguishing experience of Cyclone Idai at Kopa, a growth point in Chimanimani, and the unimaginable loss it left in her life.
“It still hurts and until today our children have not accepted that their dad is no longer with us,” she paused mid-conversation and gasped for strength to continue unpacking the ordeal.
“There was no corpse to confirm our fears, only his car and cellphone were left behind and this is something that haunts us till today.”
On the fateful day, Magodo’s husband had travelled to Mutare , the provincial capital of Manicaland, to purchase new stock for their grocery shop.
They had planned to go together, but because of the rain, she had to stay behind manning the shop and monitoring their three minors.
On his way back, Magodo said, her spouse failed to navigate a bridge at Machongwe, a shopping centre less than 40 kilometres away, so “he and two of his friends decided to sleep on the other side”.
This was before electricity and phone reception went off, cutting all communication abruptly.
“In the morning I tried to call him to no avail, I assumed the phone battery had died, but reports that a vehicle had been found unoccupied emerged and it was my husband’s car,” she said.
What began as a normal rainy day on March 14, 2019, took an ugly turn as nightfall engulfed Chimanimani — a district in the south-eastern part of Zimbabwe.
At Kopa, a confluence of Rusitu, Nyahode and Chipita rivers spilled as a result of continuous rain and with so much force, water flowed, dragging massive boulders, which subsequently claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed infrastructure including thousands of households.
Over 344 people died, at least 257 went missing while 60 000 were displaced according to a Zimbabwe Rapid Impact and Needs Assessment (RINA) report conducted by the World Bank in partnership with the government in 2019.
The RINA report estimated that there had been between US$542-616 million in damages or losses due to Cyclone Idai across nine districts in the eastern part of Zimbabwe.
Figures on the same document show that to fully recover, across sectors including health, housing and agriculture, in a short to mid-term period of up to three years, the landlocked country needed about US$557 to US$767million.
While millions of dollars have already been channelled towards recovery in Chimanimani over the last five years, the scars brought by Cyclone Idai still show and are felt to date, a testament that the actual price paid by survivors of the climate change catastrophe is way more than assumed.
“Business is not going on well, I am facing a lot of challenges because there is no money but I still have to send children to school and handle everything on my own without my husband, I just have to make a plan,” said Magodo, who initially received food aid soon after the disaster, but that has since discontinued.
On the other side of Chimanimani, the government has used part of its coffers and money from donors to build 159 of the 258 houses intended for the decent accommodation of Internally Displaced People (IDPs).
For Hegar Masemu (53), the only survivor from her family of five, recovery in the Rufaro community is a distant imagination.
“When disaster struck, me and my four children held on to a rope, which had been tied to a tree, but unfortunately it broke,” said Masemu who has been left guessing the meaning of life as she indulges the herculean task to pick up the pieces.
“All of them were just swept away, I have not been able to bury them in a dignified manner until today, they were not found.”
Hers is another of countless untold stories detailing the immense loss and damage brought by Cyclone Idai in the mountainous province of Manicaland, home to almost two million of Zimbabwe’s population of 15 million.
While survivors struggle for dignified accommodation or a decent meal on their tables, help towards securing what would resemble the normal lives they lived before the dark moment appears too distant as politics on climate action delays loss and damage funds at local and international level.
The lengthy period it is taking to close this chapter is taking a toll on an already hard-pressed population susceptible to more complex climate-induced crises according to climate activist Sydney Chisi.
“On issues of loss and damage it is not just one losing their car, house or a family member, it is also about the post-trauma recovery that people have to be faced with,” said Chisi, an executive director at Reyna Trust, a climate justice focused organisation that interrogates climate policy.
“We need to think about how to deal with the damage and loss that is emotional as well as find out how to rehabilitate communities that have suffered quite a lot because of loss and damage.”
A United Nations (UN) definition refers to “loss and damage” as the adverse consequences brought about by climate change, resulting in a range of impacts, such as loss of human lives, damage to infrastructure and buildings, loss of property and crops, as well as the deterioration of ecosystems.
At the 28th edition of the Conference of Parties (COP), a UN annual global meeting to negotiate and agree action on how to deal with the scourge, a historic agreement on a loss and damage fund to assist developing countries cope with the effects was made.
However, pledges by Global North — wealthy and developed countries expected to foot the climate change bill — countries reached a paltry US$420 million against an expected US$100 billion demanded by Global South states to effectively deal with climate change impacts.
“COP28 was a dummy according to me, whereby the negotiators, including some of the big emitters agreed on setting up of the loss and damage fund, but the conversations were not enough," Chisi said.
“Firstly, the world needs almost US$100 billion to facilitate for loss and damage, but the contributions or pledges that were made were far off short of even a billion, which then means that even from a commitment point of view the Global North is not prepared to deal with issues of loss and damage.”
But, merely waiting to benefit from global funds that are not even enough to rehabilitate one affected province in such a long period of time is not a sustainable solution.
“Zimbabwe needs to set up its own local climate finance mechanism using its own natural resources to finance loss and damage recovery for people in Chimanimani, Chipinge and Tsholotsho who were hard hit by the previous cyclones,” suggested Chisi.
Ultimately, wherever help will come from, survivors of Cyclone Idai like Magodo and Kasemu need it urgently and before they face perhaps even more fierce impacts of climate change as has proven to be the nature of the scourge in recent years.
“My main worries are about my children (the eldest 17 years old now) who are struggling to accept the reality of their father’s demise,” said Magodo, adding that post-trauma stress over the past five years has seen her spend sleepless nights battling anxiety even when it merely drizzles.
