Recover and rebuild: helping a single mother after the floods in Chad

Last summer, heavy rains hit all of Chad’s 23 provinces. The resulting floods took hundreds of lives and left an estimated two million people unhoused.

Negeum Alice and her five children are among those who lost their home. Negeum was her family’s primary breadwinner, supporting her children by farming. “I lived with my late father with my children who were abandoned by their father,” Negeum said. “It is thanks to my farming activities that we survived.”

Negeum worked hard to ensure her children, four girls and a boy, were well cared for and had access to education. But when the floods came, they wiped out everything she had achieved. “With all the difficulties I was going through, the flood came and destroyed everything I had cultivated and even the place where I lived with my children,” she recalled.

Having lost her home and her livelihood, Negeum took her children to the Sokolo disaster relief site. There, Oxfam-Québec was responding with support from the Government of Canada and the Humanitarian Coalition through the Canadian Humanitarian Assistance Fund.

Negeum’s family received a range of essential items to improve their living conditions. “We no longer have to worry about washing our clothes and ourselves thanks to the soaps I received,” Negeum said. “My children are spared from mosquito bites and the cold thanks to the mosquito nets and the blanket I found. The drinking water is well preserved in a closed and clean container that Oxfam gave me.”

There is still a long road of recovery ahead for Negeum and her children, but there’s no doubt that her tenacity and resourcefulness will help her family face this challenge.