Pedro was among thousands of Mozambicans caught in the raging floodwaters that engulfed this southern African nation in the last month. After three days in a tree, she delivered a baby girl last week just as a South African helicopter came to the rescue.

The event was captured by a television crew and broadcast worldwide. It symbolized the heartache and the hope of a poor nation overwhelmed by calamity.

Now, she and her baby are out of the hospital and relaxing at the home of relatives in this town on the edge of the flooded Limpopo River valley. Recounting her ordeal, she tells her story quietly and stoically, as though surviving floods and giving birth in a tree are the usual hardships of a hard life.

Pedro remembers that the floodwaters from the Limpopo came so quickly on the morning of Feb. 27 that she had no time to collect her belongings from her reed hut in the village of Mondeane.

"By the time I gathered the children and some clothes, it was too late," she said. "We were surrounded."

Nine months pregnant, Pedro dashed with her family to higher ground and joined her neighbors who had already taken refuge in a tree. Sofia handed her two children up and then lifted her enlarged body slowly into the branches.

"I was thinking it was the end of our lives," she said.

Pedro remembers the day the floods came as strange - the weather was clear, and it seemed incongruous with the surging brown water that came up around her house.

"We lost everything," she said, speaking in the local language, Tshangaan. Her four-acre farm is still under water and her family's crops of corn and beans are destroyed.

She recited a list of her lost possessions: A table, two beds, all her cooking pots, a suitcase and the tools she uses to farm. Until the waters recede and a new planting season begins, Pedro will have to rely on handouts from family and relief agencies to survive.

Pedro is a handsome woman, little more than five feet tall, with high cheekbones and her hair concealed beneath a kerchief. She did not get much schooling and guesses she might be 22 years old. Her daughter Celina is 5, and her son, Bene, is 3.

Her husband, also named Bene, spends most of his time in the capital, Maputo, where he sells cigarettes and candy to earn cash. She visited him a week before the flood and brought back a large bag of rice - also lost in the flood.

As Pedro and her family clambered into the tree, they tied their children onto the branches with blankets and the extra clothes they managed to collect.

Over the next three days the 15 refugees perched in the tree became increasingly weak with hunger and thirst as the water level crept six feet up the tree's trunk.

Normally Pedro's farm is a mile from the Limpopo, but now she could barely see dry land in any direction.

As the floodwaters rose, the younger men climbed to the top of the tree and ripped off branches to get a clear view of the sky. When helicopters and airplanes passed, they waved their shirts frantically to draw attention. But none came near.

"I didn't think the water would rise so high," said Pedro. "We were very worried. We thought the water was going to take us."

It was a scene repeated in hundreds of trees across the valley. Some survivors said there were as many as 30 people clinging to one tree. Some stood on the metal roofs of rickety buildings, which occasionally collapsed under the weight of so many people.

Stinging ants, wasps, mosquitoes and snakes were constant annoyances. The smell of the floodwaters was like that of an open sewer.

Those who could swim said they did not dare to stray far from the tree because the current was so strong.

From her perch in the tree, Pedro watched the constant flow of debris from farms upstream - plastic drums, timber and dead cows, goats and chickens. She saw no human bodies go by, but others say they did. They knew the dirty water would make them sick, so they did not drink.

After sitting in the tree for two days, Pedro began to feel faint with hunger and thirst. "People were so weak, it was like they were drunk," she said.

On Tuesday, Feb. 29, Pedro's aging aunt, Olinda, who was suffering from malaria, fell into the water. Some of the young men jumped in to retrieve the widow, and they bound her to a branch so she would remain stable.

But after the sunset on Tuesday, the old woman untied her ropes and fell into the water. "We couldn't save her," said Rosita Tivane, Pedro's mother-in law.

As the family grieved the loss of the old woman, Pedro said she felt the first pangs of labor. She slept restlessly that night, dozing between the throbs.

As dawn broke on Wednesday, March 1, Tivane tied Sofia to a branch with a blanket and arranged another blanket beneath her. They were about six feet above the water's rampaging surface. Tivane sat below the younger woman, using her legs to brace Pedro's legs as she gave birth.

The baby's first squalls were drowned out by a South African air force helicopter, which miraculously appeared overhead at that moment like some thunderous, blustery angel.

A South African medic named Godfrey descended into the tree on a rope, cut the baby's umbilical cord and lifted the mother and the newborn to safety.

"We are so grateful the helicopter came," said Tivane.

"I was afraid of the helicopter," said Pedro. "It made a big wind. I was afraid we would all fall in the water."

The helicopter ferried the family to Chibuto, a town built on a bluff above the floodplain. Pedro remembers her legs were about as rubbery as the newborn baby's.

When they entered the hospital maternity ward, the nurses had to register the new arrivals.

"What's the name of the baby?" the nurses asked.

Pedro had not thought of the girl's name until then. She named the baby Rosa, after the grandmother who helped deliver her in a tree.