INTRODUCTION
CYCLONE IDAI
“CHANGE WITHIN A NIGHT”
INTRODUCTION
Forget what you think you know or what you heard them presume to understand. We were simple people, living uncomplicated lives and minding our own day to day business as such is the norm of most common human beings. However no one anticipated such a despicable atrocity to avail and commemorate itself in fully altering people’s lives and futures. We had teachers, mothers, fathers, pillars of strength, everyone you need typically when you grow up but how do you explain a good morning to somebody who woke up happy but slept without a goodnight forever? I cry daily because no one understands that they call us survivors and heroes yet we are the traumatized and storytellers that were left to fabricate and edited the horror that befell our loved ones. Two, twenty, one million, twenty five zillion, do the numbers of the dead really matter when everything totally changed for us? I remember we used to go to church during sundays and we always used to joke around with the police officers when we passed by the station on our way to church but only a sea of boulders , the pulpit floor and one gumboot are left to tell the tale of what used to be!
We all had land, rich or poor, able or disabled, we all progressed under the blessed shadow of Mother Nature as an agricultural based economy and community but the science that we knew wasn’t black enough for the terror that we witnessed! Things fell from the sky, water came from everywhere ,darkness blinded us all and land disappeared .You could scream, pray and try to MacGyver the situation but when the rocks came and the landslides cultivated a new tomorrow for us, it didn’t matter who you were or how capable you could be, it was simply God’s grace to survive! People usually address death as simply saying goodbye and pouring soil onto the grave of a loved one but this was different. Imagine waking up as a husband and a father of four kids with a beautiful wife only to see the next day on top of a mountain with nothing except one picture of your family inside your wallet. How then do you normalize and accept death dear friends?
My last born survived because she was in her coat bed when the water broke through my and her mother’s bedroom wall. The coat bed floated and because the water at the time was still rising slowly she had time to escape through a window and hide under a mangoe tree. Her mother unfortunately still hadn’t come back from visiting my in-laws as she wanted to assist them at fields to plant sweet potatoes. To this day l remember my wife and three other kids by their last words as they carried hoes and fertilizer bags to my in-laws’ place, “take care of the young one for us, we will be back in the evening” and that was the last time l ever saw them. Now tell me world! Because l have sought the worst and best kinds of pain, medications and drugs trying to forget and comfort myself and be strong for my 2 years old daughter but l have failed. Some days it gets even worse because people keep on asking what happened and every time l tell these strangers what happened l just keep on wishing that l had gone with my boys and wife! If you have time, if you need more clarity and if you could spare a moment of peace and respect for the loved ones we lost then keep quiet and listen as l tell you a story of “change within a night!”
