Sweating it out

I had WiFi fitted in my apartment. It was done a lot more efficiently by two polite engineers, Elton and Mario, than Sky Broadband in my flat in Cambridge, which took multiple visits and much cursing and sweating by a Yorkshireman.

I shouldn’t have been walking around as the mercury hit 37 degrees, but I did for some meetings and spotted some blokes up a ladder doing something internet or cable related. Even in this heat none of us were sweating more than the Yorkshireman, who worked himself into a frenzy with my building’s various service cupboards.

For lunch I met my friend Virgílio, who has family in Beira, one of Mozambique’s largest cities that was directly hit by Cyclone Idai. It occupies a vulnerable coastal position and despite fortification efforts, on a recent visit Virgílio says he saw people trucking sand off the beach. This weakens the shoreline’s ability to buffer the ferocity of storms.

Aerial shots of Beira are devastating. Lots of it is underwater and telecommunications and power are nowhere near close to being fully restored. People who live far away are having to wait for news. Virgílio was meeting a group of old friends who were preparing a vehicle full of emergency supplies. It will either be driven the 1,000+ kilometres or flown when Beira airport resumes normal service. I’m still waiting for news from Chimanimani National Reserve, one of our project sites, which seems to have been badly affected and has certainly been on the contiguous Zimbabwean side. Communications and coverage were already poor, and now there really is very little information emerging.

News about Idai’s impact has been relatively slow to emerge but has now hit the international media. Kind friends wrote to ask if I had been affected, but Mozambique is a very long country and Maputo in the far south escaped the cyclone. As if to signal its desire to be involved, as I write this in bed, a heavy downpour started in Maputo; normal for the time of year and a welcome cooling of the intense humidity.