PEMBA, Mozambique — Isabella Mussa has not set foot in a classroom or read a book for the past week. For the 13-year-old, displaced by a deadly cyclone in northern Mozambique, it feels like a lifetime.
Yet she is called one of the lucky ones. More than 1 million children have been affected by a pair of cyclones that ripped into Mozambique in less than two months, the United Nations children’s agency says.
Many of the children are without shelter or food. Some saw parents killed or disappeared in the flooding that followed the storms.
But Isabella, who now shelters in the city of Pemba in the northernmost province of Cabo Delgado, doesn’t feel fortunate.
“I miss my school, my friends and my teacher,” she told The Associated Press, standing in a corridor at a sprawling government complex that now houses children and their guardians who were displaced by Cyclone Kenneth.
It is not clear when she can return home, or to school. The family home was flattened. Her school books were destroyed.
With a lull in the incessant rains on Thursday, children of Isabelle’s age were helping families repair homes or retrieve property.
“This is the first thing I grabbed when I got the chance to return home,” she said of the book.
For the first time in recorded history, Mozambique has been hit by two cyclones in a single season. Kenneth made landfall just over a week ago, killing 41 people and now sparking a cholera outbreak. Last month Cyclone Idai struck central Mozambique, killing more than 600 people and leading to thousands of cases of cholera and malaria.
Now aid groups are struggling to help the millions of people affected by both powerful storms.
