‘It’s scary’: Malawian women forced to sell sex after cyclone destroys crops

A woman weeps at a cyclone-affected area in Blantyre, Malawi, on 17 March. Cyclone Freddy, the longest-lasting tropical storm recorded, killed more than 1,000 people. Photograph: Imago/Alamy

It has been nine months since Cyclone Freddy, the longest-lasting tropical cyclone ever recorded, struck Malawi twice in six days. The cyclone triggered floods and landslides across the country, killing more than 1,000 people and displacing nearly 700,000. For Grace*, a 29-year-old subsistence farmer from Najawa in the ravaged southern Machinga district, the damage was life-changing.

“The water destroyed our home and our crops. I had one acre of maize and two plots of rice, but I harvested nothing,” she says. “Everything washed away.”