Story type: Story

Mozambique has been hit by its worst drought in the past 35 years. Two million people in the central and southern parts of the country are in need of assistance to see them through the next months.

Joaquina and Relia have been neighbors in a little village close to Funhalouro in the Southeast of Mozambique for many years. The two friends spend hours to fetch water every day. Their village has no running water, no electricity and the nearest hospital is hours away. They live in a little round hut that they have built themselves with poles out of wood.

Before CARE built the community pond, Thy had to buy water when this became scarce. If she hadn’t learned to make a good income from her home-raised livestock, she wouldn’t have had additional money she could spend on this water.

Amira Halilovic is from Sarajevo, Bosnia. Milica Katitc is from Serbia. They have so much in common that they do not seem to give any importance to the bloody factions that divided their two countries just a few years ago.

“When fighting breaks out, it is the pregnant women and children who suffer the most”. This is what Angelina tells me, a mother who had come for an antenatal visit to one of our CARE health facilities.

Ask anyone in Yemen, “How has your life been impacted by the war?” and instead of naming the violence from airstrikes, missiles or gunfire, the more common response might be, “Everything is so expensive now, and I can no longer find work to support my family.”

“What exactly is El Niño?” I was asked this question more than once in the past months. For many El Nino is an abstract term, something that reminds them of difficult geology lessons.

A cotton flower is soft, fluffy and beautiful. But a 40 kilo bag of cotton is a 40 kilo bag - and Severine and Maina, two middle-aged women, have come a long way transporting their heavy load to the buyers' market here in Muape, northern Mozambique. They are tired but happy: It is payday, and selling 800 kilos of cotton each to the local cotton company means food, shelter and schooling for their families for the coming months.

In February 2016, Batoul packed a bag, carried her four-months-old baby, and headed into the unknown all by herself. She fought with smugglers, escaped a fire, almost drowned with her baby, had no food for three days, walked for a week in a cold forest, and traveled thousands of kilometers by bus, boat, and on foot until she reached Serbia in June 2016.