When the floods came: Oxfam in East Sudan

This summer, parts of Sudan's eastern Red Sea State were hit by severe flooding. The town of Tokar was among the worst hit, with thousands of people displaced from their homes, and many more trapped by the rising water. Up to 30,000 people were affected and some of the town's outlying villages were completely submerged. As the only international organisation currently working in Tokar district, Oxfam - which has been present in Red Sea State for more than two decades - immediately launched an emergency response to assist the local community.

The area around Tokar is one of the most inhospitable natural environments in Sudan. Clouds of thick sandy dust cover everything in sight, and for ten months of the year temperatures often rise up to 50 degrees Celsius. Droughts are harsh and frequent and many of Oxfam's programmes here provide short-term food aid and long-term development to improve food security.

But it is a place of extremes. Floods are common as well, occurring annually as rains from Eritrea to the south flow into the Tokar delta. Most years the light flooding proves a blessing. Dykes have been built to manage the floods, diverting the water away from inhabited areas and safely towards the sea, through the delta basin where it deposits rich soil and silt that fertilises the fields.

But this year the Eritrean rains were unusually heavy, and the increasingly old and fragile dykes could not contain the water. The dykes burst and the populated areas on the edge of Tokar were heavily flooded.

"People's homes were underwater - they had to take shelter in school buildings," says George Were, Oxfam's Programme Coordinator in Red Sea State. "The impact of the floods was made even worse because many of the affected people were immigrant labourers who annually settle around Tokar in preparation for the coming farming season. They are only here temporarily so they set up makeshift shelters to live in. These were easily destroyed by the floodwaters and the labourers were left homeless."

As well as somewhere to shelter, food and water were the most urgent needs of the people in Tokar. "The first things we did were start distributing food provided by the World Food Programme and setting up a new supply of clean water, and distributing jerry cans with which to carry the water," says Were.

Many of the local wells were destroyed, in an area where clean water is already a scarce and precious resource. In the area of Khojaly, thirty-three of the forty public wells were submerged beneath the floodwater.

According to Raphael Mutiku, an Oxfam public health expert deployed to Tokar to help coordinate the response, "When the wells are destroyed, people have no choice but to drink the flood water. At first, when it is still free-flowing, it is relatively safe. But after a while it stops flowing and begins to stagnate - leading to countless health problems."

"The longer people are trapped by the floods, the worse the problems get," says Mutiku. "Human waste gets mixed in with the water. A cemetery was flooded, leading to further contamination. Animal carcasses could be seen floating by. As the water stagnates, it also becomes a breeding ground for mosquito larvae and malaria, and other deadly water-borne diseases."

Oxfam's provision of alternative water supplies through new tap-stands has so far helped prevent widespread outbreaks of disease. We have also constructed concrete channels to separate water for animal troughs and human consumption, avoiding contamination. But the threat is far from over - in many ways it is only just beginning.

More than two months after the floods hit, the waters have now subsided somewhat, but the long-term impacts remain. Some of the cultivatable land has been destroyed; other land has not received the fertile soil it usually gets from the carefully managed light annual flooding. A poor harvest is expected and future food shortages are likely. The price of food has risen, with dangerous consequences in an impoverished region that is already suffering the highest rates of malnutrition in North Sudan.

As the water recedes, thousands of displaced families are naturally eager to return to their homes. But this will expose them to contaminated environments. "New outbreaks of disease are possible," says Mutiku. "The clean-up process is vital, and we are doing all we can to help make the environment cleaner and safer for people to live in."

Any response to floods is a long-term one, and Oxfam will continue to support the community over the coming months. "At the centre of our response - like all our work in Red Sea State - is local participation," says Were. "Working here for such a long time, we have forged very close ties with community groups."

Right from the start of the flooding, local people were involved in the relief efforts. Well Committees were established to help restore the wells. Later on, Oxfam distributed rakes with which the community has begun the long clean-up process. Public health education classes have been undertaken to promote hygiene awareness at such a dangerous time. This participatory approach will continue as we work to rehabilitate the existing traditional shallow wells and school latrines, and to build new ones. "Thousands of displaced people had to use the school facilities," says Were. "We don't just want to fix what was broken, we want to leave the schools in a better condition than we found them in."

As well as repairing damage done by this flooding, we are also exploring ways to try and ensure that the area is better protected from any similar future disaster.

"We want to ensure that if the floods occur again, the area has a back-up water supply so people are not left completely without," says Were. "Together with the local authority we are looking at sustainable long-term options such as a solar-powered water system that could remain in operation even during emergencies."

Droughts, floods - the people of Tokar live in a climate of extremes. But with Oxfam's help they are exploring new ways of mitigating nature's challenges.

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