Life after the storm
LIFE a month after Durban’s superstorm is worse than living without most of their worldly possessions for the Sarlickrams of Isipingo.
It’s also about pluviophobia – fear of rain.
“I don’t sleep at night. I sit up to 11pm, 12 at night,” said Raksha Sarlickram. whose husband Anesh “swam to the window, bent the bars and broke in” after his wife summoned him home, then took their five-month-old baby up into the rafters to safety.
“These days when it’s raining I refuse to go to sleep. I can’t go through the drama again,” Raksha said.
She said her husband still had bruises from his “swim”, which also saw him caught up in barbed wire as he made his way over a broken wall in the sewage-filled floodwaters.
The only ladder at hand to access the rafters was covered with oil, which meant that all the Sarlickrams’ worldly possessions were ruined by the two pollutants. Now they have nothing. Adding salt to their wounds, after the storm, Anesh lost his job as a driver. Six months ago Raksha chose to leave hers as a saleswoman at a department store to be at home with their baby.
“We lost everything,” she said shedding a tear, adding that the contents of their rented home were not insured.
Anesh has taken to fishing at Isipingo Beach and their families have also pitched in to help. She feels the eThekwini Municipality could have done more.
To her surprise, the Samsung company tracked her and other owners of their appliances down to repair those that had been damaged, which means the Sarlickrams still have a washing machine and television. They also brought groceries.
“Unfortunately I had already thrown out the fridge and the stove. We couldn’t even leave a cup here because of the sewage and the oil. My baby’s stuff was brand new.”
Meanwhile the pluviophobia has spread to their extended family, who have been their main post-storm benefactors.
“When rain is forecast, my mother and my mother-in-law are on the phone, asking if we are safe and if the baby is safe?
“They say ‘go somewhere else for the night, go to relatives in Lotus Park and Phoenix’, but we are too many. We are four in this house.”
Nearby, another unemployed couple, Sagren Moodley and Michelle Carpede, who have a toddler, have no idea how long it will take before they will be able to recoup their losses since their one-room home filled with floodwater.
The municipality and their families have helped them with a mattress and food, said Carpede.
Colin Naidoo, a self-employed scrap dealer, said he too would have to pass time before having any hope of repairing his uninsured rented lodging, a converted garage where he lives with his family.
Water gushed through the garage door, ruining household goods including furniture. The wind uprooted a tree that came down on the roof of his carport.
“It’s uncomfortable now but we don’t have another home.”
Another Isipingo resident, Mpume Ntuli, spoke of how she was surprised that their household insurance did not cover their built-in cupboards and their built-in stove. She has also experienced a blockage in her toilet.
Her family have repaired a section of their outside wall that had come down but not the stretch along the road where there had been a gate, worth R25 000, that had now vanished.
Babalwa Mda said she had to move into a second section of her home after her previous living quarters had been flooded. She received an insurance payout after having put up a fight.
“We’re adjusting but it’s pretty difficult,”she said.
She said she expected to be in the second section of her home “for a very long time”.
Meanwhile Samsung has repaired the flood-damaged appliances of about 150 people, free of charge, after their homeswere damaged in last month’s storm.
Regional service manager Ashley Chengiah said its staff at various centres, both in Johannesburg and Durban, had dug into their pockets to donate money to buy groceries that were distributed to people in Isipingo, uMlazi, the Bluff and eManzimtoti.
“We were in these areas every day for about three weeks,” said Chengiah.
The company set up a base camp at a church in Isipingo from which they ran a houseto-house campaign in badly affected areas to find people with devices of its brand.
“We also put out advertisements over the radio,”said Chengiah.
The company also donated R500000 to the Gift of the Givers for disaster relief.