What years of war, cyclones and displacement have wrought upon the people of northern Mozambique

Companheiras!” shouts a man called Enric, standing on a covered septic tank in the parking lot of the Pensão Vincente in Chiúre. It is the morning muster and a group of drivers, doctors, nurses and counsellors, all wearing white Médicos Sem Fronteiras (MSF) flak jackets, assemble in and among five world-weary Land Cruisers fitted with tall radio antennae. Each faces the hotel gate, having been artfully reversed in the night before. (Chiúre is one of the safer towns in northern Mozambique but there have been attacks in the district before and you never know when you might need to leave in a hurry.) In a hoarse smoker’s voice well accustomed to projection, Enric goes through the day’s activities — who is going where, carrying what — and then cries, “Ok, vamos [let’s go]!” The men and women subdivide into outreach teams and the vehicles cavalcade out into the world, weaving at high speeds around potholes and missing sections of road on the way to Nampula province, on the other side of the Lúrio river. View of storm clouds from the back of an MSF Land Cruiser, in Cabo Delgado province. (Sean Christie) Most are headed for temporary clinics MSF has set up near to the town of Alúa, in Eráti district, which is notable for the enormous cowl of granite that rises up on one end. The entire landscape is littered with fantastically shaped inselbergs, in fact: here a vast lion, there a thimble (one of the more phallic formations between Alúa and Namapa is called “Monte Jeito”, after a well-known condom brand). In October last year, large numbers of people came streaming into this picturesque world, fleeing attacks by Islamist militants on the villages of Chipene and Necoro in the neighbouring district of Memba. More than 39 000 people scattered, according to the International Organisation for Migration, with at least 30 000 more fleeing fresh attacks in November. Some of those who came had sought refuge here before, after the school, health centre and church at the