Muslims in the region spend Ramadan trying to rebuild their lives amid shortage of food and damaged mosques.
Piles of debris lie where thatched mud huts once stood in the village of Guludo in northern Mozambique. Broken pieces of furniture and muddied books litter the landscape and many like Asma Mushillah, 53, spend their days trying to salvage what they can from the rubble.
In an ordinary year, the villagers would be observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, fasting from sunrise to sunset and praying, but this year, life seems extraordinarily difficult.
Many are trying to rebuild their lives nearly a month since Cyclone Kenneth ripped through the northern coast, where the majority of Mozambique’s Muslims live.
The country’s central region was still reeling from Cyclone Idai that made landfall over two days in mid-March causing devastation across three Southern African countries, killing over 1,000 people.
Then on April 25, Cyclone Kenneth hit the already water-logged country killing an estimated 45 people affecting 375,000 people who remain in need of emergency assistance, according to the UN.
Mushillah says her observance of the Ramadan fast has been irregular because of the storms.
They washed away her food supplies along with her home, that she hopes to rebuild with a tarpaulin roof.
“The wind and the rain were too strong for my house, I lost everything. I found a few pots after the flooding, but I don’t have a house. My sons can help me to rebuild, but after that, we will still need food.
“I should be fasting, but I can’t do it very well. It’s a fast without order, some days I eat because I don’t know when next I will get food. I’ll fast properly if we get more food aid, then I will know I have something,” she said.
