MADAGASCAR: Relief materials air-lifted to isolated communities in cyclone-hit Madagascar

Record ID: 455759

  • Title: MADAGASCAR: Relief materials air-lifted to isolated communities in cyclone-hit Madagascar
  • Date: 17th March 2008
  • Summary: PEOPLE IN THE VILLAGE OF AMBAHOHABE WAIT FOR HELICOPTER TO UNLOAD VARIOUS OF PEOPLE WAITING FOR RELIEF FOOD HELICOPTER BEING UNLOADED (SOUNDBITE) (Malagasy) FARMER OLINE ANDRIAHALO SAYING: "I lost my house, like so many other people, but the storm also took my crops. We have no food now and I have lost my livelihood."
  • Embargoed: 1st April 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Madagascar
  • Country: Madagascar
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVA4QMOI9ML2USDLSZP786ZM7J0D
  • Story Text: One month after Cyclone Ivan destroyed roads and bridges across north-eastern Madagascar, isolated mountain communities of the Analanjirofo region have only just begun to receive aid deliveries.
    A World Food Programme helicopter able to carry up to 2.5 tonnes is on loan from the organisation's Mozambique office and will make four to six daily rotations several times a weeks for at least a month in an effort to reach isolated villages.
    While a combined emergency response from the government and several aid agencies is now bringing in emergencies supplies, villagers are preoccupied by the loss of their cash crop harvests and the lingering prospect of food shortages, which may follow in this normally fertile and self sufficient region.
    In Analanjirofo, 80,000 people lost their homes in two days of hurricane winds and the weeks of continual rainfall that followed. Farmers not only lost their subsistence rice crops but also lucrative cash crops such as vanilla and cloves.

    "I lost my house, like so many other people, but the storm also took my crops. We have no food now and I have lost my livelihood," says Oline Adriahalo, a farmer.
    Analanjirofo, which literally translates to the forest of cloves, is one of the main growing regions for the girofle tree from which cloves are harvested, primarily for export.
    Vanilla, litchis and coffee are all valuable cash crops grown here and are significant Malagasy exports. Madagascar is the worlds largest exporter of vanilla and second largest producer of cloves, most of which are produced in this small region.
    While small wooden houses were rebuilt within days, both Litchi and Girofle trees will take at least four years to flower and fruit. Vanilla, which grows in a vine around existing trees, also needs to be carefully replanted as orchards are rehabilitated.
    Jaques Rakotovao is the district chief of Mahasoa, a village in Analanjirofo. On average, 80 percent of the agriculture here has been destroyed. Of his three hectares of girofle trees only a handful remain.
    The harvest season for cloves lasts just two short months in October and November, but a good crop can bring in 400,000 Ariary (237 U.S. dollars) a month. In a country where most of the population is considered poor, this is enough to keep a family going until their litchi or vanilla crop is ready and makes this a relatively wealthy region.
    Jaques, like many of the farmers here doesn't grow much of his own rice, focusing his and his family's efforts on cash crops with which he can buy rice to feed his family. Now they have nothing left to grow or sell.

    "We don't know what to do, most people here have lost hectares of trees and their income for at least four years. We have to worry that the people we sell to won't come back if it takes four or five years to get back to where we were," he said.
    While the helicopter's operations offer a short-term solution, Karim Najar, an emergency specialist who has lived in the region for nine years is planning long-term agricultural programmes to help the people of this region once again become self-sufficient.

    "In the short term, all the agricultural produce that the people offer for sale to support their lives, all of that resource has disappeared for the population. This will continue for many years, two or three or four years at least. For the rest of this season it's sure that the population will need help and support to meet their food requirements," said Najar.
    Food distributions are prioritising food-for-work schemes to rehabilitate roads and bridges to reconnect these communities to nearby cities so that aid can continue for at least three months.
    A category-four storm, Cyclone Ivan, hit the north east coast with comparable strength to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. Nearly 100 people have died and 322,000 people have been affected.
    Madagascar, is ranked 143 out of 177 on the United Nation's 2007 Human Development Index, with an estimated 85 percent of the 20 million population living on less than 2 U.S. dollars per day in 2005.
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