Floods wreak havoc in Africa

Aid workers are trying to reach villagers in Uganda in the wake of torrential downpours and flash floods.

Tiny fish swim beside the dugout canoes that residents are using to escape their flooded homes, riding the water gushing through the streets of the eastern Ugandan town of Soroti.

Across Africa, whole towns have been submerged and bridges, farms and schools washed away.

More than one million people across at least 17 countries have been affected by the rains since the summer, according to the United Nations.

At least 200 people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced.

In Uganda, one of the hardest-hit countries, humanitarian workers were trying to reach villages that have been cut off by water amid warnings of food crises and rising risk of disease outbreaks.

“I’ve lost everything,” Martha Amongin, 56, told The Associated Press in Magoro, a town in eastern Uganda that is surrounded by floodwater and has become inaccessible by road.

“Life is going to be bad.”

Driving rain pounded Amongin’s mud hut for days until the fragile structure simply gave way, disintegrating into a wet pile of dirt and burying everything inside.

In Magoro, the only route out of town to reach a hospital or market is by helicopter, boat or wading through waist-high water for 5 kilometres (3 miles).

Earlier this week, the water was chest-deep, and one person drowned while trying to make the trek across, residents here said.