Juan Luis Rod

On 25 April, Cyclone Kenneth hit northern Mozambique and left 45 dead, more than 100 injured and some 250,000 people affected. This natural disaster hit the African country just a month after the devastating Idai, which caused a thousand deaths. In the picture, a boy poses in front of his destroyed house in the town of Pemba, one of the worst affected, waiting for his school to reopen. The Quirimbas archipelago has also been severely affected. Some of its islands, such as the beautiful Ibo, where Spanish Cooperation implemented cultural development programmes, and some NGOs, such as Fundación Ibo, have been supporting socio-economic development for two decades, are devastated. "In the years we've been here we've never had to face a situation like this, 80% of the island is destroyed, 3,000 people are homeless, all our projects have been suspended for now and all our infrastructure has been affected and needs rebuilding," they say. A situation that is repeated in other areas. Everyone agrees that help is urgently needed.

Much of the streets of Pemba and the roads of the Province of Cabo Delgado were destroyed and left many neighbors of different towns incommunicado. This complicates access for the distribution of humanitarian aid for the different NGOs operating on the ground. Strong winds uprooted trees, destroyed boats and caused power cuts. Meteorological reports from Météo-France indicated that the maximum height of the waves reached five meters of altitude in the extreme north of the country.

The risk of contracting cholera remains quite high and many areas remain flooded even though several weeks have passed since the strongest storm. Many children spend their days playing in these stagnant waters, which are an easy source of infection for contracting diseases.

The cyclone also left strong rains and winds on the coast of between 180 and 220 kilometers per hour. Two weeks after the impact in the province of Cabo Delgado, many of those affected are still removing water and mud from their homes to try to repair them. This is the case of Gamo Boa, 34, who lived with his six children and lost all his possessions.

A group of women are actively working to restore the damage to their homes so that they can be reoccupied.

The neighborhood of Cariacó, in Pemba, is another of the most affected after the passage of the tropical storm, and even children work tirelessly to dewater their homes and help their families in the reconstruction process.

Childhood has been one of the most affected population groups. At least 477 schools were destroyed and almost 42,000 students have been left out of school.

More than 27,000 houses have been partially destroyed and almost 20,000 totally destroyed in the Cabo Delgado region. 55,488 hectares of crops have also been affected, of which 28,189 hectares have been totally lost.

"We lost everything: clothes, food, documents... And my house is still flooded. We tried to cover the walls with some plastic to protect ourselves, but it's impossible to live here under these conditions. Bimocdade Chande and her six children were in their home in Chibuabuar, one of the neighbourhoods most affected by the tropical storm caused by Cyclone Kenneth in the city of Pemba, Cabo Delgado Province.

The city of Pemba and its inhabitants are trying to recover normality. Chissano was on his way to a job interview, but before that he wanted to show how his neighbors' house and his had been completely destroyed.

Ramadán tries to recover the few goods that were left after the passage of the cyclone, in the house where he worked as a guard.

After 11 confirmed cases of cholera in the city of Pemba and the continuing risk of contracting the dreaded malaria, volunteers coordinated by workers from Mozambique's National Institute of Disaster Management distribute mosquito nets to those affected who remain at the Muxara Shelter on the outskirts of Pemba to avoid contracting more diseases.

A group of cyclone-affected people wait patiently at the Muxara shelter for food and blankets to be distributed by a team of workers and volunteers from Mozambique's National Institute of Disaster Management and the World Food Programme (WFP).

Magdalena Albino, 30, was one of the first to arrive at the Muxara Reception Centre. She was pregnant and her home, located in the Chibuabuar neighbourhood of the city of Pemba, had been devastated by the cyclone. A few days later, in the same reception centre, she gave birth to her fourth child, Kenneth Adrian.

Children walk through a rubbish dump in Chibuabuar, an informal settlement in the northern part of the city of Pemba. Here, a few days after the cyclone made landfall, six people died after piles of rubbish collapsed as a result of heavy rains left by Kenneth, one of the strongest storms to hit the African continent.