I remember I was at home watching the news with my family. I asked myself how the people in Manicaland were going to cope with the disaster that was all over the news. Little did I know that within a few hours I would be part of a group of first responders.
I received a call at around 10pm from my supervisor instructing me to pack my bag full of all the emergency essentials (emergency preparedness is the first training staff receive when joining the World Food Programme).
I then had to tell my family “duty calls”, and that I would be leaving them the next morning. This is the nature of my work, and the time had come to fulfill my mandate of saving lives. One of the first things I packed, after my camera, was my VHF digital radio for communication.
The next call I got was from the head of WFP’s media and communications division at headquarters in Rome who said, “Tatenda, we hear you are going to Chimanimani and Chipinge early tomorrow morning, are you ready for this task?”
At first, I didn’t answer; I had always admired my colleagues who rushed to help others in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and other hot spots around the world where there is conflict, hunger, famine, floods and war.
Now here I was, faced with the biggest test in my career. This all raced through my mind while I was on the phone.
“Tatenda, are you still there?” she asked again, to which I replied, “Yes, I’m ready, count me in!” The task ahead of me was huge. Mozambique was the first to be hit by Cyclone Idai, just before Zimbabwe.
My colleagues in Mozambique had already started rescuing and delivering food, medicine, and they were updating me with real-time information in a group chat.
The first stop was at the Provisional Administrator’s office in Mutare, to get an update on the situation. I remember the names of the affected communities: Ngangu was one of the worst affected, Kopa had been swept away, Skyline, Wengezi, Silverstream, Mutambara were cut off from the bigger communities. People needed food, medicine and shelter, and there I was: holding a camera in one hand and a backpack in the other.
“Are you here for rescue or tourism? Please, out of my way,” bellowed a certain gentleman who was co-ordinating the movement of everything at the Mutare aerodrome.
At 2pm, one of the biggest helicopters ever built was scheduled to touch down at the base, and was to take me to the epicenter of the cyclone. With my little knowledge of aviation, I had assumed it would be a light aircraft.
The majestic MI8 helicopter after landing in Chimanimani
I checked my phone for time. It had one bar of battery left and was about to die on me, since power lines had been cut off by the harsh winds. Next thing I knew, the deafening sound of the helicopter announced its arrival.
People say WFP is the biggest logistics organisation in the world, and watching that monster land, I believed them. It was built for war, I said to myself. “Yes,” one of the pilots replied, “it was built to fight hunger in such emergencies”.
Since WFP was stamped on the helicopter, and I was wearing my WFP vest and cap, the person who accused me of being a tourist rushed to me and said, “are you one of the pilots of this helicopter?” I told them that I was not, and that I had come to help deliver food and medicine to the affected communities.
After refueling, getting the co-ordinates of the affected communities and reviewing the local aviation regulations, we were up in the sky. Part of our cargo was for pregnant women who had had complications during delivery. I later on learnt one of the women and her baby survived, and she named the baby Faith.
As we flew over Chimanimani, I felt tears in my eyes. I recall flying over a graveyard there, with so many freshly dug graves.
As the helicopter touched down, I expected to see kids running to inspect it, as everyone was doing in Mutare. This time was different. I saw terrified faces.
As we were ushered across Ngangu, a place where more than 90 lives were lost in one night, I couldn’t believe what I saw. To think that this happened at night, when people were asleep, broke my heart.
