By Chrispin Inambao KATIMA MULILO Record floods that have displaced thousands of villagers and submerged scores of thatched huts and several houses, took their first human toll over the weekend when three people drowned in floodwaters in separate incidents in the Caprivi. One of the victims, Manyando Mwananyambe, an epileptic, drowned at a sports field at the school at Isize last Friday at around noon while she was swimming in the floodwaters. The flowing current that claimed her life dragged her for a distance of about 5 metres before her body got ensnared onto a tree. Her mother found the body when out of anxiety she went searching for the girl, said Detective Inspector Christopher Kalimbula. Police investigators fetched her body that is now at the Katima Mulilo Hospital Mortuary where a post-mortem is expected today. Preliminary investigations have however ruled out the possibility of foul play, as all indications are that she drowned. Kalimbula said the second drowning also took place last Friday at around 17h00 at Mbimbimbi Village in the Ihaha area where three people had gone paddling a canoe. The dug-out canoe was caught up in a whirlwind that capsized the rudimentary vessel, prompting its three occupants to swim to safety but only two landed safely while the third person, a Zambian national identified as Pilato Pathi Pilato, 45, drowned in the process. He sank to the bottom of the stream and Kalimbula said he would try to notify his Zambian counterparts who in turn will relay the sad news to the victim’s relatives in Zambia. Pilato’s body is being kept at the police mortuary at Ngoma awaiting a post-mortem. The third drowning occurred along a channel near Songa village in the Namiyundu area where four boys accompanied by a pack of dogs went hunting for the pot. After the ill-fated hunting expedition the victim, Oliver Nyambe, 5, tried to swim across a channel to his village but he drowned in the process and his body was only retrieved by village elders after they started asking his peers questions about his whereabouts. During the 2004 floods when water peaked at 7.04 m several people lost their lives and 12 bodies were fished from the Chobe River alone, according to a police source. This year the number of drownings is expected to increase as the floods over the weekend already reached the 7.00 m mark, yet the level has yet to reach its average peak in March/April. Sources also told New Era that dozens of people were spotted in the Lisikili area wadding through flooded streams looking for higher, drier land for refuge. These people had stacks of their earthly belongings on their heads while others were driving cattle to higher areas. Many settlements along the Zambezi River are already cut off, bush paths used by motorists are flooded and several villages and crop fields are submerged in floodwater. Some houses near the Zambezi River in Katima Mulilo are being evacuated after they started being flooded over the weekend and the Mukusi River Lodge is also inundated. Villagers at Sangwali and Malengalenga in Linyanti constituency have not been spared from the current flooding as they have incurred severe crop losses. Yesterday, the Detective Inspector briefed Caprivi Regional Governor Bernard Sibalatani and others in Windhoek mandated with emergency management about the flood deaths.