Alone in a wide expanse of flooded plain, an ox waits to die, his carcass yoked to a wooden plough submerged in the brown mud. Downriver, a cow stands marooned on a flat roof, fearfully eyeing the receding waters below her. Goats and chickens huddle on the thatch of straw huts here and there but there are, strangely, no people to be seen as the silent waters swirl left and right for miles beyond the natural borders of the Limpopo river.
Our reconnaissance flight has travelled hundreds of miles upstream, far beyond the main area of evacuation and rescue around Chokwe and Xai-Xai. Little is known of the fate of people here, who were the first to bear the brunt of the floods that first hit Mozambique a month ago.
The town of Macarretane, for example, is completely flooded, its buildings destroyed and its streets abandoned. The adjacent dam afforded no protection when the surge came down the river. The waters simply flowed around the dam, into the network of irrigation canals around the town and into the fields for miles around. The flow of water is so wide in these parts that it is difficult to tell where the river is, and at times our pilot errs as he tries to follow its path. On the higher ground to the south of the river, there is little sign of human habitation, only the odd straw hut or wisp of smoke from charcoal burning. The absence of people is eerie.
Where have they gone? Is the death toll significantly higher than the official estimate of about 350? We won't know for certain until boats and helicopters make their way here; at present, Macarettane and places further upstream are out of range. There is nowhere for a plane to land. However, British army units are currently moving into bases on the South African side of the border, which are within flying distance of these stretches of the river.
"We only have a very foggy picture of where people are right now," Ms Brenda Barton of the World Food Programme admits. "Up to now, we haven't been able to reach the people we want to with the resources on hand."
Only now is it becoming apparent how far the disaster outpaced efforts to contain it. When Macarettane went under on February 12th, the Red Cross brought in a store of blankets to Chokwe, further downstream, in expectation of flooding there. A French charity installed medical equipment to treat cholera. All this was wiped out when the Limpopo burst its banks as never before a fortnight later. Aid workers woke one night to find water lapping around their feet; by the time they packed their essentials a half-hour later, it has risen to their waists.
"Four weeks ago, the provincial health inspector in Xai-Xai, at the mouth of the river, told us the airstrip we were standing on would be inundated," says Mr Dermot Carty of UNICEF. "He was right, but I don't believe anyone imagined it would be quite so bad."
Bit by bit, the international aid effort is coming together. The shelters and medical supplies are in the airport in Maputo, emergency food supplies are in the docks and finally there are sufficient helicopters and boats. Now the task is to get the help to the people who need it - no easy task in an area the size of Ireland, where road and rail links have been cut and people are living in the bush.
The government's national institute for disaster management is leading the effort, in a delicate partnership with the UN. Specialist committees have been set up to deal with the areas of health, food, shelter, sanitation and logistics; each committee has a lead organisation (such as the Red Cross in the case of shelter) and liaises with smaller aid agencies on particular projects.
The intervention was slow to get under way, but can still make a huge difference. The main tasks will be to minimise health problems and epidemics, rebuild a shattered infrastructure and get the hundreds of thousands of people affected back on their feet again as soon as possible.
The WFP and other agencies are still pondering whether to install the survivors in less temporary camps or to encourage them to return home once the waters have receded.
However, as Brenda Parton conceded yesterday, thousands of Mozambicans, barefoot and penniless, have already made their own decision, by turning their backs on the high-tech razzamatazz of Western aid and returning to the subsistence farming they know best.