There is nowhere to go
Awusife Kagbitor paces anxiously on a dry patch of land overlooking her collapsed and completely submerged three-bedroom home in Mepe in Ghana’s Volta Region. She says she saw water gushing into her house from a nearby stream, and within 10 minutes the water level had reached her neck. On hearing that his mother’s home was flooding, her son Kenneth rushed to the scene and swam his way through the rising waters to save his mother and young siblings.
The 56-year-old farmer is one of thousands of victims of the floods in south-east Ghana. It’s a disaster she is struggling to come to terms with. They were taken unawares and couldn’t salvage anything, she tells me as beads of tears roll down her face. “My entire farm is under the water and so is my house. I was only able to take my clothes. It took me about 14 years to build this house – there is nowhere to go, there is no other land to build on,” Ms Kagbitor said.
Elsewhere the cruise ships ply to and fro.
I can empathize, having recently been the victim of a flood in my basement. My losses weren’t so dire, but I did lose the printed copy of my dissertation, a significant loss. It felt so helpless; losing everything would have probably destroyed me.
My heart goes out to her, and all who have been affected. Our own area was hit by unprecedented flooding yesterday. We were safe, up here on our hill; although there’s some comparatively minor flooding across the road in both directions, and some routes are impassable, my husband was able to get some supplies in a nearby village when he was unable to get to town. Someone had laid pallets across the worst of the flooding in order to act as a bridge so that people could reach the grocer; when he came out ten minutes later, the pallets were floating away.
In town, though, whole cars were floating away, mostly submerged. When my husband got back, more than two hours after he set off, everyone was watching the news, and videos from friends. Townspeople were being evacuated to the big hotel on the hill, where our grandson and his partner work (he is a manager). The news said that the hotel was severely understaffed – my husband joked “That’s because the staff are here”. Sure enough, they soon got the call to come in if they possibly could, and so off they went.
Nobody local, however old, can recall flooding like this. The town has been inundated several times over the last decade, but never nearly as deep. The youngest member of our household made it home, because the busses were able to get through the lanes out this way and he was able to slosh his way to the pickup point; but most of the schools in the region kept their students in, as no-one could reach them. People were kayaking along Main Street, and over the top of the walls on either side of the road on what is usually the bridge across the river.