Floods Last Year, This Year, Next Year, Every Year…

Several parts of Accra, Ghana’s capital got submerged in water after a rather heavy down poor Saturday evening which left many displaced and properties destroyed.

The flooding has become an annual ritual for every  month of May and though it  generally destroys property and sometimes takes lives, every four years, it takes a rather higher form of disaster.

This weekend’s flooding was not  unexpected yet very little of absolutely nothing was done to minimize the impact.

The devastation and its effects would dominate the news headlines for this week, and perhaps half of next week, then that’s it. The chapter remains closed until next year.

Normally the media discussions would center on a blame game cacophony with slight traces of politicization.

Year after year, for decades, the floods are caused by same reasons. Government knows the causes. The citizens know the causes.  Everyone pretends to be addressing the issue but no one really demonstrates a real sustained commitment.

There are a variety of already known causes: building in water ways, chocked drains caused primarily by the continuous dumping of solid waste into shallow gutters, there is the irregular distilling of the Odaw river, there is an avoidable booming of human activities along the banks of the river, human activities that generates more solid waste that gets dumped into the river…. The list is endless and are mostly caused by human beings. Human causes  that are preventable.

But here we are, year after year, our own actions and inactions land us in this flood disaster.

It is interesting to note that some of the permanent structures erected in water ways have building permits from the relevant institutions of state. No one really cares or gives a  hoot. Anyway.

There is no sustained education to encourage people to stop concreting every single available space on their compounds when they build. It is as if leaving some bare space or planting of grass is an offence or something out of vogue in Accra.

We forget such initiatives all help in trapping or holding on to rain water which would have otherwise spilled to the streets and the already choked gutters.

The gutters themselves are mostly shallow. The drains are mostly uncovered.

Once in a rather long while, the community would remove sand from the open drains and pile them along the shoulders of the road. After a while the sand returns into the gutters and the cycle continues.

It is as though there is an unwritten  mutual agreement that we should all do the wrong things. We are united in nonsense.

It is sad Saturday night’s rain water found its ways into many homes and got  mattresses, kitchenware , electronics and sometimes even cars attempting to swim.

It is sad the  goods and stock of traders got destroyed and in many cases, their capital is gone. It is sad the floods rendered many people homeless and hopeless.

But what is even more sad is that next year by this time, there would be another folding caused by same reasons….and the year after next year, there would be another folding until we changed our ways as a people supposedly created in the image of God.