Rain kept water levels up in several East Coast Demerara villages yesterday ensuring that residents were left to endure their misery for yet another day.
From Success to Paradise, Better Hope to Vigilance and other villages in between many residents expressed their frustration with the situation. For some their misery was further compounded by the loss of crops and poultry that they suffered.
“Every time the rain fall the place does always duck”, Shamaaz, a housewife of Lot 26 Felicity, ECD told Stabroek News. The bottom flat of the building where she lived was inundated and the person who lived there was forced to move upstairs. They said that the water was on the land since Sunday and had even been higher than the two feet that it was at yesterday. Shamaaz said that the water had only receded a little and now appeared to be stationery. She said that she had been living there for about eight years and this was the situation every time heavy rain fell though this worsened three years ago when a dam was destroyed.
Natasha, another resident of the same area expressing her frustration, stated that “I got a `lil baby and this water here ain’t healthy.’ As she spoke to this newspaper with the murky water that flooded her yard in the background, three of her four children, with nowhere to play, stared out from the tiny verandah.
Other residents came out of the homes when this newspaper was there and they all voiced their frustration with the situation. They complained that every time it rains heavily the area floods. They added that the destruction of a dam three years ago worsened the situation. “We does get the flood but not to this extent”, one resident said, and some related how they had had to move their furniture and other possessions out of the reach of the high waters. In that area varying amounts of water covered the yards with some as high as two feet. The residents said that they are forced to buy water and stating that they paid rates and taxes called for something to be done to alleviate the situation.
Henry Perry, a Felicity resident and small poultry farmer, wading from his water-covered yard said that 16 of his chickens died yesterday morning and he had to throw them away. He said that since the water began to accumulate on the land on Monday, 56 birds died. “It hard pun we brother, this water nah moving”, he said. His chicken pen was inundated and another little pen, raised off the ground served as shelter for some chicks but he expressed worry about their survival as he said they were “catching cold”.
Le Ressouvenir farmer, Diranie Adolphus could only shake her head as she watched her water-immersed boulanger and celery seedlings. Her pakchoy plants were already destroyed. She said that she had planted 300 boulanger plants and over 10 plots of celery. The plants were not likely to survive, she said, adding that the water had been on the land since Sunday.
She recounted that she had only replanted the seedlings after her crops were destroyed three weeks earlier, also by flooding. With sadness in her voice she stared at the drooping plants and said “Dat is we living”.
At the Mon Repos Primary School, children playing in the dirty-looking water covering the playfield seemed not to have a care in the world as they pranced around and played games.
But in Buxton and parts of Vigilance the glum faces were evident. At the East Ville Housing Co-op in Annandale, water covered large swathes of land and long boots were a requirement. One resident said that the grass in the canal contributed to the situation.
Animals too sought higher ground and some cows ventured out onto the road while pigs were seen roaming in the water.
At Vigilance North, a game of watery football was engaged in by young men as water covered the yards in the area.
When this newspaper made a check at the Liliendaal and Kitty pumps, both were in operation. Dark clouds hung low over the skies around the coast yesterday though it only rained intermittently. The rainy weather has been blamed on La Nina and is expected to continue today.
