Madagascar's People Struggle to Rebuild in the Wake of Tropical Cyclones

The people of the Mahanoro region of Madagascar have always lived with cyclones. But this year's unprecedented run of six major storms hit especially hard. One storm after another flooded their fields, ruined crops, destroyed houses and made it impossible to keep children safe from malaria and other diseases. The heavy rains left up to 75 percent of rice and manioc crops ruined as the storms came at the worst possible time — just as harvests were underway.

Because food stocks will only last for three more months, food will run out before the October manioc crop and the end of the year rice harvest. In fact, real hunger is already setting in, as poorer families fall back on eating wild plants as a last resort. Because the whole country has been hard-hit, villages in this area are still relying on their own resources, and outside help has yet to reach them in any meaningful way.

CARE's support will help these people — and thousands of others — through food-for-work efforts, technical help for irrigation systems and new seed stocks so people can replant their fields and gardens. CARE is already mobilizing to distribute seed stocks of corn, beans, sweet potatoes and other garden vegetables and to carry out food-for-work projects that help get food into the hands of hungry people. The project also helps marshal workers needed to rehabilitate the irrigation systems and roads crucial to the area's economic survival. Additionally, CARE expects to introduce a new, hardier rice variety for local farmers.

What has it been like for people to survive these storms? "Las ny mamba misosoka ny voay" is a Malagasy saying that means, "As soon as one crocodile is gone, along comes another." Some people in Madagascar are now living this proverb. Pietra, in Ambalavontaka, says his fields were already flooded by the third storm of the season. He and his family tried to replant their fields, but the drainage system was so badly damaged his fields remained flooded and crops would not take root. To earn money for food, Pietra tries to catch shrimp to sell. It seems like a good plan, but a CARE relief worker sums up his predicament: "Pietra tries to collect shrimp at points nearer the shore, but he only does this occasionally to lower the risk of encountering hungry crocodiles."

Jeanne, in Benavony, is similarly challenged. She and her husband have tried to replant their tiny rice paddy, but in order to get food now they have to work for others, ignoring their own fields. In the little spare time she has, Jeanne weaves mats for $1.60 per week and her husband cuts trees to sell for firewood and charcoal. They are now reduced to eating vya, a starchy, unpalatable plant with little real nutritional value and toxic qualities as well. Jeanne says wearily, "The more we eat vya, the weaker we get..." Jeanne's comment is a harbinger of the food crisis just around the corner, say international relief experts here in Madagascar. For Jeanne, Pietra and thousands more, CARE food-for-work projects will be critical in relieving immediate food shortages and helping them grow new crops and repairing vital irrigation systems.

The current food shortages affect more than farmers. Rice huskers can't find rice to husk — losing the income they would normally earn. Kolitika and Vola are the huskers in their village but because there is no rice to husk, they search for field work. As a result, they have been reduced to eating unripe breadfruit knocked down from the trees by the storms. Kolitika has not replanted his devastated fields. He explains: "I've let it go already. If I were younger and could buy the seeds, I would replant. But I can't now." They will be unable to plant a rice crop now, but with CARE's help, they have a chance to cultivate vegetables, sweet potatoes, and corn that can replace the missing June harvest, and Kolitika will work in CARE's food-for-work program.

Baofaiti, a single mother with a family, breaks down when she talks with a CARE relief worker: "My heart hurt, and I felt so weak, I just cried." After looking at her small rice field she sighs and says: "There were only four dry days, so I could only replant once, but it failed. The rice isn't growing. Nothing, yesterday there was still nothing."

For the present the only thing she can do is work in someone else's fields for 40 cents a day. Her children have become sick from infected water sources, but she simply doesn't have the time - or the money — to take them to the clinic, some six miles away. Baofaiti is keeping her older children in school, but she is already months behind in tuition payments. Like many others, she will be dependent on CARE's food-for-work initiatives to ward off starvation and technical help from CARE workers to restore her field so she can again grow rice.

The crisis is not limited to the poor. Jean-Richard is Satrana's richest person — he owns the general store and five acres of land. But his crops were flattened by the third cyclone of the season and his general store has lost its trade because few people can afford to buy anything from him.

Jean-Richard has hired Boladi to work in the store; she earns about 35 cents a day, and her husband, a farm laborer, gets about 50 cents a day, but this is not enough to buy more than half the food their family needs. As a result, their diet increasingly consists of plants like vya, not rice or manioc.

Boladi thinks it will take at least two years to recover from the impact of the cyclones. In the meantime, CARE's support is vital for those affected by the disaster.