While the city authorities want flood victims to find places, where they can stay, people camped at the Benjamin Mkapa school gate claim they have nowhere to go. With nothing to do to earn a living and a place to call home, they have been surviving on the handouts from Good Samaritans, who now seem to be getting fed up with them.

“Getting food has been an uphill task. We are forced to beg in shops to get some money for buying food but shop owners are fed up with us,” says Sakina Mohammed (45), a mother of three.

When I visited the area last Friday, the homeless tenants told me they had nothing to eat a night before.

They had only collected some money for buying maize flour and beans for lunch that day. They used the little remaining flour to cook porridge for children and expectant mothers in the evening.

“I have not taken breakfast today and as I speak, I am not sure what we are going to have for lunch,” Sakina lamented. As I spoke to Sakina, Amina Shaaban, a mother of four summoned a girl sleeping on the ground to get up and go to beg with others.

“Stop pretending you are sick. You should go with the others to beg. We need food for lunch,” she shouted. Amina said the girl might have been pretending to be sick so that she could be excused from going to beg in the shops. It is a gruesome task, especially now that shop owners don’t want to see them anymore.

“The shop owners are fed up with us. They think we are telling lies. But we have no choice,” she said summoning more people to go begging, this time mothers with babies. This is a strategy they have been using to win people’s sympathy. Although they have been getting some money for food on some of the days, begging has not been easy at all.

Abdul Paul, one of the tenants, who used to be a petty trader before the floods, says they have been enduring all sorts of insults from some shop owners. “We continue begging because it’s our only way of survival. Some have been wondering why we continue living by the roadside, while we have been given plots,” says Paul. He says they try to explain to such people why they are begging and not all understand them. He says instead of being transported back to the village like the regional commissioner is suggesting, they should be given money to rent rooms. That is all they need to start life a fresh.

He calls upon the government, if it at all it recognises them as its citizens to help them since they are suffering a lot, especially pregnant mothers and children. “The government should save us from this humiliation. We just need money for rent so that we can move on with our lives,” laments Paul.

These people have to continue begging for survival. Apart from buying food with the money they get, they also need money to pay for services at a pay toilet in the area. That is where they shower too.

“Some people have been calling us all types of names, others have been giving us 50/- or 100/-. We have been enduring all types of insults because we have no alternative,” said Saum Omari, a mother of two. She was in the group of people, who went to seek audience with the regional commissioner last week and was sad when she saw the food supplies for the flood victims being offloaded from vehicles.

She was sad because she knew they, at Benjamin Mkapa school, would get nothing. All aid meant for the flood victims goes to landlords.

Regional commissioner Said Meck Sadick told this paper they had no centre at Benjamin Mkapa school. However, last week, this reporter witnessed schoolchildren camping with their parents at the school gate being given school uniforms and equipment.

Sakina says the government’s decision to give priority to the landlords was unfair because not all landlords lived in the affected areas. 

“My landlord, for example, lives in Kawe and was, therefore, not affected by the floods. But he will be allocated a plot in Mabwepande area as we anguish here at the roadside,” she lamented.

As their hope to get plots diminish, these tenants wish they could at least be helped with a two-month rent each so that they can move on with their life.

“Where else can I go?” All my belongings were swept away by floods including my business capital,” Sakina, who used to be a food vendor before the floods, says.

Like the rest of the people here, Sakina blames the government for abandoning them. She says women are having a hard time and are going through a lot of humiliation.

Despite all that they are going through, they vow to stay at Benjamin Mkapa school gate until government intervenes. Some claim to have no parents and, therefore, no one to go to back to their home village.