MBOMBELA – Dr Andre Hattingh left South Africa on April 30 and arrived back on Tuesday. He was accompanied by Michelle Ingram from the Methodist Church in Nelspruit who had collected food for the victims.
Sizabantu Piping Systems assisted the group by supplying a truck to carry the supplies for the journey. The first time Hattingh travelled to Mozambique right after the cyclone struck on March 14, he got stuck near the rural village of Inchope, 90 kilometers south of Beira.
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Being stranded for hours he realized the villagers had received no help from relief organizations
The village will now remain their international relief project for the next year, until the next planting season has been harvested.
After three days of long and hard driving, they reached the village. Thousands of people got word that the team would be arriving bringing with them food, medicines, clothing, blankets and toys.
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They found a throng of people waiting for them. Amongst the crowd, a group of 30 mothers with their babies from a village 30 kilometers had walked to the town the previous day to reach the village in time.
“ How committed these amazing women are to find help to stay alive in this famine and be the heroes in their families and village,” said Hattingh.
They offloaded the food, medicines and other donated goods at the Clinic, Centro de Saude de Muda Serracao 10 kilometers from Inchope.
“A sincere thank you to all our donors across South Africa who generously donated monies, food and other items to feed 1000 people from this village. Thanks to you these families went to bed, having had a satisfying meal and not going to bed hungry. We also thank the Limpopo
Synod of the Methodist Church of South Africa who donated a truck full of foods and other
items including wheelchairs as well as the Nelspruit Synod donating family high protein
meal packs which they packaged together,” concluded Hattingh.