Rest In Peace Phalombe Flush Floods' Victims

March 10, 1991 may be a long lane to some.

But we know the day is as close to you as the present itself. Keep on going.

It was sad yesterday- when I was watching a rebroadcast of the event by Malawi Broadcasting Corporation Television- to see one of the babies who survived that catastrophe.

She is now 20, with a child of her own.

She was found floating on the water; the water that took her mum away forever.

That day- March 10- rains poured all night in Mulanje (now Phalombe District). Then, big rocks started falling from hills and mountains- rocks so big it is still hard to understand how such big rocks got pushed by limbless water.

Many perished in that disaster.

President Bingu wa Mutharika summed it all up when he said: "We do not know, up to now, how many lost their lives in that disaster. Only God knows."

How can a community not count the number of its dead when, others say, in Malawi each one knows everybody else.

Mutharika has the answer; "Some people may have just come here, or happened to be here on the day of that disaster, and perished, too."

He is right. Putting the actual figure at -one-human-being less is immoral.

It is a sin, too. A lie.

But they all lie in peace, anyway, wherever it is they saw the craws of death take their breath away.

And, perhaps, they watch over us; watching over the waters of Mount Mulanje.

Lest they run amok, and take our peace away.

Rest in Peace, our fellow citizens.

Your death has made us one.

The truth, and pain, is one, too.

We are one.

Your souls and our bodies make one nation: of the lost and the living. Only that you are not lost, you are pioneers- gone to sit at the vintage point, and see our souls come- one by one.

When our day comes.

Finally.