‘We live inside an oven’: Extreme heat adds to woes facing Mozambique
By Milton Zunguze
Like other women in her rural community in southern Mozambique, Adelaide Macuacua has long lived with drought, floods, water shortages and poverty.
Now another pressure is adding to the burden: Extreme heat.
“Drought has always existed and we have learned to live with it. But this heat is increasingly leaving us without strength, without energy,” she said at her home in Massingir district, a semi-arid area in Mozambique’s Gaza province.
Community members now travel longer distances for water as droughts become stronger and more frequent, but “sometimes it’s not even the distance to fetch water that stops us, it’s the heat. It is so intense that it makes us give up on going to get water,” said Macuacua, 42, who was born in the district.
More extreme heat is far from the only problem in Mozambique, a southern African country that has struggled with conflict, political unrest and climate -linked disasters, particularly floods and drought, that have destroyed infrastructure and undermined food security.
Just this month, floods have swept through Gaza province, displacing more than 600,000 people from their homes in southern Mozambique.
But rural residents in Massingir district say extreme heat impacts - from crop failures to health problems such as skin rashes and an inability to sleep at night - are making a hard life even harder.
Vasco Chaúque, the leader of Nyete, the community where Macuacua lives, said families are seeing more cases of diarrhoea, cough and skin problems such as scabies as temperature extremes grow.
Many of the problems first showed up in children but are now affecting adults as well, he said.
Macuacua said increasingly hot nights are also reducing the restfulness of sleep, with little chance for people to cool down after hot days.
“We sleep but our bodies wake up tired because they’ve been exposed to heat the whole day,” she said.
Carlota Chaúque, a neighbor in Nyete and Vasco’s wife, said she goes to bed feeling overheated and often hasn’t recovered by the morning.
“I wake up with my body hot as if I had a fever. I feel dizzy, sweaty, suffocated,” the 44-year-old said.
Temperatures in Gaza province hit a high of 43 degrees Celsius in 2025, surpassing a maximum of 42.4 degrees in 2024, according to Mozambique’s National Institute of Meteorology (INAM).
crops to charcoal
More extreme heat - which usually peaks in January - is also combining with drought to kill crops, forcing more families into felling forests and making charcoal to survive, with the loss of trees driving further heat and drought.
Macuacua said as her farmland has become less productive she has ended up largely abandoning it.
“No crop can survive drought and heat together,” she said. The combination “burns everything,” she added.
Carlota Chaúque said the heat and drought is much worse than just five or 10 years ago.
“Now it feels like we live inside an oven,” she noted. “The ground and the wind become hot, like charcoal. Leaves burn before they grow. If there is no water underground and the heat is this strong, how can a plant survive?”
Farmers, besides facing drought and extreme temperatures, also have increasingly seen elephants invade their fields, intent on eating the only greenery available, they said.
Planting more heat-resistant crops - such as cassava, sweet potato and sesame - could help farmers deal with the new conditions, said INAM climatologist Isaías Raiva.
But “the problem is that we don’t have support for heat-resistant seeds,” Carlota Chaúque said.
“The biggest disease we face here is hunger. Then come the others,” she said, noting that in her community extreme heat is becoming synonymous with hunger.
With farming a growing challenge, many women now try to make a living by helping their husbands produce charcoal - an exhausting and hot job even when temperatures aren’t soaring.
“I leave there dizzy, with a weak body, and blood pressure above normal,” Macuacua said, as she sat on the ground, feeding her grandson.
Carlota Chaúque, who also produces charcoal with her husband, said efforts to move the work to cooler parts of the day were failing, with cool nights increasingly rare.
"I wake up at 5 a.m. to work before sunrise, but even then I already feel the heavy heat in the air. When the sun comes out, my body starts to fail. Some days I return home because I feel that if I stay any longer, I might faint,” she said.
seeking water
With local water sources now scarce and treks for water increasingly dangerous in the heat, women are turning to new ways of fetching water.
Alice Matusse, 46, from the community of Nyerere, said she and other women increasingly pay for water from trucks that harvest it from the nearest water lagoon, 10 kilometers away, and carry it to their community. Filling a 20 or 25 litre container costs about 25 metacais, or 40 cents.
A family of three or four people needs a minimum of a dozen containers a month, she said.
Macuacua said in her area she and two women living near her now use an oxcart to travel in search of water, making the journey just once or twice a month and bringing back about 16 containers of water - each 20 to 25 litres - each time.
Even those who live closer to water supplies and use a wheelbarrow to carry water containers are suffering now, she said.
“Walking a kilometre or more in this heat can leave a person dizzy,” Macuacua said.
In earlier years, families were able to store rainwater to avoid long walks for water. But as the rains become less reliable and droughts worsen, that option is disappearing, she said.
Women in Massingir say they are increasing worried about the future as heat, drought, floods and other problems accelerate.
“I feel tired, as if the day is heavier than it should be. I’m afraid, because each year it gets hotter and I don’t know how much more our bodies can take,” Macuacua said.
Both she and Carlota Chaúque said they see only one way to reduce the threat: improve local water supplies, in part by rehabilitating old storage lagoons - something now underway - or building new ones.
“Water is crucial for our survival. With water we can cope with the heat, plant small gardens, fight hunger and stop walking long distances,” Macuacua said.
Carlota agreed.
“With new water source they’re rehabilitating, maybe things will change. Maybe we can have gardens, bathe more often, live better.”