Those of us who live in towns where floods find us ankle deep in water and filth whenever there is drizzle that goes beyond a few minutes, cannot possibly visualize – even with the help of the pictures that appear in the newspapers – the really hellish conditions that prevail in other more low-lying regions of the country in these La Nina times. It’s almost surreal to travel along the East Coast and watch entire living spaces partially submerged in water; to watch livestock and dogs sharing the smallest of un-submerged spaces and see people going about their business on what was once dry land in car tops, abandoned fridges and anything that will float whilst staying dry inside; and if you had even seen a movie about how boat people live in China you might even wax nostalgic at the sight of our own boat people going about their business with a semblance of normalcy………..as if they had been living that way forever.
You have to get close up and personal with what you see when you drive by and when you do your perspective changes. Wading through the floodwaters, trying to get your newspaper much more than a photograph taken from the window of your car you begin to become intimate with the situation. It is then, for example, that you notice that the floodwaters in which groups of naked children are wading about excitedly are dotted with clusters of drifting, rotting garbage; that a dead chicken or six float around too….on their own independent volition; that the pit latrines are partially submerged and are probably themselves compromised so that in all likelihood their contents form part of the ‘pool in which the children play; and the grown-ups are too busy getting on with their drudgery to worry about the menace of disease.
You will see the makeshift kitchens and firesides surrendered to the floodwaters and the households’ belongings, to pots and pans and the bits of furniture piled up in precarious-looking heaps in an effort to try to keep them dry. You will see old people sitting on small, barely dry spots staring dolefully at the river before them ……..they have seen it all before and they have come to terms with it as a familiar appendage to their existence and they are not in the least bit phased or impressed by the pictures in the newspapers and the official promises of help or the technical assessments of the circumstances of the Lamaha Conservancy.
They are silent in their contemplation, that silence broken when they point to a particular section of the expanse of water and tell you that beneath that particular spot lies several beds of calaloo that were almost ready for reaping.
It is a marvel to watch these victims of the floods contrive an existence of normalcy from circumstances that are, quite simply, horrendous, unfathomable to those of us whose homes don’t lie on the bare ground and who, even in the most difficult times, can make do with a pair of long boots. And in one particular village where you stop to talk with people they have no time to talk, their preoccupation being with one of their own, an elderly man marooned alone in his hovel, imprisoned by the floodwaters. Your question about something that isn’t of the least importance to them has to wait while a handful of small boys are dispatched, assigned to wade waist deep in the infested floodwaters, each holding a small parcel of what appears like food above his head, to get to the old man’s cottage; the elders monitor their mission of mercy from boards assembled to fashioned a makeshift stage.
Watching this spirit of community unfold in the midst of the most challenging circumstances gets you fuming over the contrived divisions in the Republic where there is more than enough for all of us if only we would pull together. Perhaps those who govern us – be they government or opposition – should be made to place their offices and their salubrious homes and themselves in the floodwaters just to see whether that might not cause them to really understand what a collective crisis can bring. And if you’re wondering whether Pradoville was a victim of the floods we can only say that we did not venture there; and even if Pradoville had been under water it would probably been for only the time that it would have taken to mobilize every water pump along the coast to deal with the problem……… not like the woman in the partially submerged community whose makeshift water pump was the old paint pot she was using to try to bail at least some of the water from her kitchen.
You have to marvel at the fortitude of the victims of the floods and become infuriated by the corresponding lack of official urgency; the blustering and the media releases that have become part of the game of playing monopoly with people’s lives. Help will come…………. Sometime; it will manifest itself in public officials dressed for the part; in jeans and hats and sweatshirts that will be discarded once the photographs for the press are taken showing them handing over black plastic bags with a little of this and a little of that and probably some jeyes fluid thrown in for good measure. What a palaver!
And as they pick their way back to their cars they worry about whether or not their peripheral encounter with the floodwaters might cause them to go down with Leptospirosis having already put behind them the hapless folks whom they have left to cope from one distressing season to another; waiting for the rains to come and then for the waters to recede and for the next inevitable season of deluge to bring the floodwaters again.
Meanwhile, the Ministers and their entourages head for the nearest Health Centre to fill prescriptions acquired before they set off to have their pictures taken handing over the black plastic bags. And why not? They want to be around to hand out more black plastic the next time the floods come. Deh aint tekkin chances with Leptospirosis.
