It never only rained for the people of Phalombe district in the south region of Malawi but it also did pour as the morning of 05 february  2015 the skies showed no signs of opening up to the sun and dark clouds surrounded the beautiful mulanje mountain giving no hope to areas surrounding it, these are the areas that had suffered heavy down pours and that memories of the early January 2015  when they had huge floods that drowned all their belongings, livestocks wered seeing floating and been awawshed downstream, fields damaged and soaked as if they were arids with no trace of single plant life.

But this time the rains were different, pouring horizontally and melting the mad bricked houses they had sweated to build.
These rains had poured continuosly two days bedfore the Community of sant egidio had come with the first food help in the area. These are the houses that had succumbed to the first heavy rains that had traumatized the whole nation putting all business at a standstill, crippling the both the electricity and water system, resulting to the whole nations blackout for one week. Exposing the already weak utility system of the country.

Chief Mwapete of phalombe said ‘ we completely have nothing to look to, no water to drink, and when we find that water then its dirty water that only aids the already weak bodies to get diarrhea, our children are not going to school because their classrooms are been used as shelter for the homeless who have not yet found any shelter, we need a temporary plastic tent for them. No jobs since all the fields are destroyed and we need to help start again, but that means we have to buy again the seeds. I could see my people drowning and the rivers pushing them down, I could hear their cries biut there is nothing I could do, I was completely defeated by the rains.’

This summarized it all, in  a simple gesture of appreciation they thanked the community of Sant Egidio for the assistance which was described as timely. This was the first assistance since the floods damaged the area mid January. They are just hearing of the different assistance going to different places but none has ever reached them,. This is one of the challenges to the distribution of relief items in Malawi. Most of these places are hard to reach areas, the roads are badly constructed and this has been compounded by the heavy downpours. The muddy road cannot allow heavy trucks to pass through with food items loaded, even the truck that was hired to pick our relief items never made it easily, it was a travel that took almost the whole day and at times threatening to overturn. That’s indeed the challenge that has been aggravated by the washing away of the bridges. The government of Malawi has just put adhoc bridges to help the relief trucks pass and reach the remote villages.

The Community of Sant'Egidio has targeted more than 5000 families with food and other relief items that are targeted in six flood hit districts of  Mangochi, Balaka, Zomba, Phalombe, Thyolo and Blantyre. These are the areas the community of sant egidio has more than 6000 members who have mobilized themselves to help the poor people who make the family of the community in Malawi, which include elderly services to more than 1000 old people and the school of peace children are more 11000. This assistance comes from the appeal the president of the community of Sant Egidio Prof Marco Impagliazzo in communion with the community,made to the whole world in order to help the flood victims in Malawi. The youth for peace in Malawi will tomorrow hold a general assembly in Blantyre and Lilongwe and make collections towards the buying of food relief.
‘am happy, I can finally smile, in the middle of the problems I see brothers and sistgers of the community that have helped me with food at least for this month.’ Said one villager mrs kaledzera. The distribution pack is comprised of 10kgs maize flour, 5kgs beans, 1 kg sugar and a plastic paper.