Imtiaz Sooliman – Newsroom Gift Of The Givers on Malawi

Now severe weather patterns have caused havoc worldwide. At the

start of the 2050, new year, more than half of Malawi has been

declared a disaster zone. Following weeks of torrential

rains, we are seeing the same situation in Mozambique, with

1000s affected by heavy rainfall that has damaged schools, bridges

and lots of other infrastructure moving to the other parts of the

globe. Icy cold weather in Gaza has also led to many deaths.

Relief, disaster organization, gift to the givers, announced last

week that they will be sending aid to both Malawi and to Gaza. Now

joining us from our studio in Durban is gift to the givers.

Founder, Dr MTS, Suleiman, Dr intras, very good morning to you.

Thank you for joining us.

Morning. Even good to be with you again. Dr Suleman, before I go to

you to chat about both Malawi and Gaza, I want to go to your man on

the ground. He's Jafar, Jafar jakura, who is in Malawi. So I

just want to get a quick update from Jafar. Very good morning to

you. Jafar, you on the line.

Yes, I am. Good morning to you too, as well, and thanks for

calling. The situation is falling in many areas now. We've got

the main disaster area signed in and and

taking place, and a lot of people of over 120 1000 have been

displaced. Overall, the figure is over 200,000 they've got in the

southern tip of Malawi, a place called Mulan, a place called

palombe in mulanji district, the areas are completely submerging

water. Properties have been destroyed. The roads have been

converted into pools of Lake everywhere, and there is every

effort been made to see that, apart from our own organization,

gift and forgive us, we were also paying on board. In our case,

we've been supplying food items in in the kikwa district,

together with our Malawi Defense Force helicopters, we have reached

to places where people have been stranded and have not been able to

get any food supply. And also, we assisted and supported the Malawi

defense force by ensuring that people who are stranded or have

given some kind of shelter, and we moved into areas where people have

actually been sheltered, in places like community halls, schools,

churches, mosques and schools.

We've got a situation where

we need something like almost three ounce tents. And there is a

short supply of tents we had in Benghazi and and the manpower will

be supplied from our sales force to see that various pens are

erected, apart from just making every effort to see that we do

also erect a few tents. Plastic Sheets for damage. House repaired

is required for reinforcement.

Then, on the education side, 240, schools have either been submerged

by flood waters or used as temporary displacement sites.

Millions of dollars have been lost of education. Surprise, schools

being used as temporary shelter. Longer term, the schools need to

be relocated completely.

The school needs around 800

so there's quite a big demand arising from this catastrophic

disaster Jafar. Just tell us a new cyclone is expected to make

landfall, or was expected to make landfall in Malawi last night, are

we seeing more rain, and is the outlook looking just as bad for

the week ahead?

Yes, for the next week southern region, which has been very badly

affected up to now,

the rains have subsided here, but the central and northern regions

are likely to be hit, likely to be hit very hard with heavy downpour

of rains. The as far as the cyclone goes, there are two

theories. One is going to move away to Madagascar. The other one

is that that through the Congo, it may come beside as well. So people

are bracing for anything of every eventuality that that may take

place, but the likelihood is that we will be spared this the cyclone

hitting us, but the downpour of games is supposed to come in, cats

and dogs type. So central and northern region are now the areas

which are likely to be affected very badly already, out of 28

districts of Malawi, 15 districts have been affected, and five of

them are in the central region. So we are hoping that we don't have

too much of damage, but the indications are very strong that

we will have more destruction. The

passed away.

Is over 200 and 153 people only in chikwa district are missing. So

overall, the the country is bracing for some real hard times

for us, Jafar. Thank you very much for that update. As you can

understand from that update on the ground from Jafar jakuda, who is

in blanty and marae, the situation is dire. The outlook is not good.

I've got Dr imtia Suleiman with me, live from Durban. Hello again.

Dr Suleman,

a tough, tough time for the people of Malawi. I want to ask you about

your relief efforts there and then, if you can tell us if you

have any difficulty in dealing with the situation on the ground

right now, the

relief efforts is what gaffa has mentioned to you already. We in

Malawi for 10 years. Strangely enough, the office in Malawi was

opened by the brother of the present president. Peter mutarika

is a present president. His brother, Dr bingo. Mutarika opened

our office officially in 2004 and from that time, we've had

excellent relationships with the Malawi government, even with the

president before this Joyce Manda. And when we got to the areas in

the south, the Malawi Defense Force were very, very helpful. In

fact, we were really reliant on them. We must not forget, we will

give credit to the Malawi government and the defense force,

being a poor country, they've done an excellent job. They screen 4000

people from trapped areas very quickly. They don't have the best

of boats and the best best of helicopters, but they were

admirable. Their statistics, their figures, everything was up to

date. Total cooperation. So in terms of logistics and support,

it's been brilliant, of course. Except where the areas are

impossible, with broken bridges and broken roads. You can't do

much about that, but they use the helicopters to ferry the supplies

to trap people, and they even use their boats to ferry supplies to

trap people. We, from our side, in South Africa, had water rescue

teams on standby last night. The disaster management told us, look,

the water levels are subsiding in the south we don't need the water

rescue now. Most of the rescue is done, but we are, as Ghaffar

mentioned, expecting more rains in the central and north region. If

that becomes a problem and becomes very critical, then we'll call you

for the water water teams the other area that's on. We have to

be on standby after the day he's explained the damage. What is the

point now? We have to wait for the medical crisis. There may be

cholera and other water borne disease, which is a reality.

There's stagnant water, and there's a lot of mosquitoes.

Malaria, normally, is a big problem in Malawi. It's going to

be aggravated now by this millions of liters of stagnant water. So

that's what we want standby for, and we have a medical team on

standby for that purpose. Again, we won't move until we get the go

in from the Malawi disaster management, we do want to impose

ourselves on them. Have you had any response after your appeals

for assistance last week?

Yes, yes. Many people have already started. Many people have called.

Some people said, I've been to Malawi. It's very sad. Where can

I? Can I bring stuff for you? Other people said, when's the bank

details? Other people said, What can we drop off? Others? Other

said, we're making collections, and we'll get back to you. So

we've had an excellent response, you know, in from people calling

us generally the weekends. It's a bit slow in South Africa, but from

this morning, we will get many, many more people calling us and

responding to us, because we know people know the situation. The

media has covered it quite extensively, and people are aware

that it's a major disaster.

Let's move our attention to Gaza, where another humanitarian

situation is playing itself out icy, cold weather. It's a little

bit unheard of. Tell us about

the detail of what's going on in Gaza, and then what's the latest

from your team on the ground there?

Around the same time as the Malawi floods broke, I got a message from

Gaza, very sad message from office representative there, saying this

child has died from cold weather. And she mentioned three or four

children in different areas who died because of cold. Then she

mentioned a fisherman who went to sea to try to fish for his family,

and he died, succumb to the court also. And she said, look, as a

result of the war in Gaza in September, in July, you know that

war had destroyed many buildings. Of course, I had seen that for

myself with a team that had been there. And strangely enough,

before I left in September, I told them, your biggest problem is

going to be winter now, because there's no way you're going to get

building material in here. You can't build homes. People are

going to be stranded outside in tents, maybe in the open area.

When winter comes, you're going to have a major, major problem. They

said, What can we do? We don't have building material. It's

access to Egypt and Israel is very difficult, and the borders are

blocked. We don't get building material coming in, so we have to

just manage on the outside. Last year. When I say last year, I mean

december 2013

they had a flood situation there. And this time they had a cold

situation, and the coal was freezing, as you know, all over

the Middle East. And immediately they called. They said, Look, kids

have died. Other people have died. We released money, and we.

Said, Go and buy warm stuff and start covering the people that

they have. They live in open areas. It's tense, it's water all

around. There's no proper there's no gas, there's no fuel, there's

no heating. They have to chop firewood to make themselves warm.

So all you can do now is try to provide warm stuff, nothing else.

And you know, it's just stuck. That's all you can do. We've

already started disputing warm items. And we've asked them, if

they require anything else, they must please let us know

what are the main obstacles that your relief organization is facing

in dealing with the issues in Gaza right now?

Well, Gaza, the biggest problem is, if you cannot get the items

inside Gaza, it's a major nightmare trying to bring it from

the outside, either from the Egyptian side or from the Israeli

side, or even from the Jordanian side. Things don't move fast

enough. There's an emergency. Sometimes you can meet for five or

six months for items to come in. Unfortunately, they have a total

blockade on items coming to Gaza. So when you get stuff inside, like

when the war happened, we were very fortunate that they had some

supplies initially in the stores that we could buy medical

supplies, we could buy equipment for them. Now, again, we're

fortunate that they had some stock inside those, some of those

companies in Gaza, but if they don't have the stock, it's a major

problem. It takes a long time, several months before you can get

anything in, and by the time you get it in, for this case, we try

to get winter items in, it'll probably summer by the time.

How many months before, before things start to warm up a little

bit?

You look around, probably around end of February, you know, by end

of February, March, it starts getting warmer. But remember, the

weather patterns have been upside down. All over the world, nothing

follows a system anymore. In South Africa, in summer, it's cold. In

winter warm. The weather patterns have been messed up all over the

world, so there's no definite way you can say yes. Now the sun is

coming through. As the sun comes through, suddenly you have three

weeks of cold again. So it's very, very difficult, but normally, by

the end of February, beginning of March, things should start warming

up, to some extent in Gaza. Dr Suleman, thank you very much for

for talking to us this morning and give us a picture as to how things

are standing in Gaza, as you've just seen, but also in Malawi,

where massive, massive humanitarian aid operation is

underway, many people are still threatened, if not from direct

flooding, also from waterborne diseases and well, the threat of

of mosquitoes

that hangs over them in that part of the world. So get in contact

with gifted the givers if you want to make a contribution to the

relief effort in Malawi, Mozambique also, And in Gaza, But

You