Floods: payback time for man's greed

This year’s rainy season has been costly in East Africa. We have seen harrowing scenes of havoc wreaked by unusually heavy floods especially in the major cities and towns of East Africa in which lives have been lost and property destroyed. This is not new. Floods have been common in the poorer areas of Nairobi, largely because they are in the low-lying, flatter areas of the city. The poor areas (also known as slums) usually have unplanned settlements and lack proper drainage. Most of this is accepted as a sort of occupational hazard. What is new and unexpected is the fury of the flood waters. Kampala, though built on hills, and once had a natural drainage system, has become a nightmare when it rains. All the water running off the famed hills can hardly pass through the clogged drainage channels and blocked wetlands, and drain into the surrounding swamps and lake. In our own Kigali, rain water rushing downhill through open drainage canals has in the past been known to carry with it children and even adults to their deaths when it rains heavily in such areas as Kimisagara and Gitega. These days this sort of destruction is blamed on climate change. It is responsible for torrential rains, floods and rivers bursting their banks. But records show that this is not exactly new phenomena – that in fact rain was heavier in the past and floods could cover the whole earth (remember Noah’s Ark?) When it shines too much and for a prolonged period, this too is a result of climate change, of the ozone layer having been severely depleted. Of course, this is true. But there are other man-made reasons that have nothing to do with climate change, at least in our East African neighbourhood. Anyone travelling through East Africa will notice that a lot has changed to the landscape. Man is the principal culprit in this change, although he will always find a convenient agent to carry the blame. Once upon a time (I am not beginning a story. Well, maybe it is a story) there were beautiful wetlands graced by tall grass, reeds and papyrus. Water flowed under and between the vegetation. Waterbucks, different types of fish, snails, worms and all kinds of amphibians led a happy watery existence in the wetlands. The grass, reeds and papyrus were used for making mats, baskets and for building. They had enough time to replenish themselves. Occasionally the bucks were hunted for their tender meat, and among fish-eating folk, the marshes were full of manna and they did not care whence it came. The relationship between humankind that lived on raised ground and the wetlands and the life they harboured was an example of functional, aesthetic and ecological harmony. They exemplified the right equilibrium between exploitation and renewal because the former depended on the ability of the other to regenerate. What do we have today? The wetlands have disappeared. The reeds and papyrus have been replaced by buildings of every imaginable shape and size - no sense of design, of line and symmetry. They are the embodiment of disharmony in which each building competes for ugliness, monstrosity and the ability to cause pain. Perhaps they reflect the spirit of those who build and live in them. The baskets and mats and other artefacts made from wetland plants have also disappeared. Who needs them anyway when the Chinese make plastic imitations? Few remember their organic smell that linked them to the land, a sort of earthy warmth that made one feel affection for, and connected to, the hand that had made them. Today, we only have the cold, impersonal, plastic imitations from Chinese machines. We know what has happened to the water. It has not gone away because it still rains. It just sits there and when it gets full, in all sorts of places. You see, water must flow. No amount of obstacles will stop it. So, should you wonder why some places flood? There were hills too, once proudly covered with grass and trees. They have been scarred and denuded of their cover by our greed for space and what lies in their belly. The same competition for ugliness and who can occupy higher ground and boast of some sort of superiority is also evident on the hills. Like wetlands, the hills don’t take interference in their make up too kindly. They particularly don’t like being disfigured and, in revenge, let all the water run down their scarred sides and cause all the havoc we have seen. Nature shows puny man that he does not have monopoly for causing harm. Return to Rwanda, and you will be glad that we live in a place in which ecological harmony and beauty are respected. We can appreciate all those green spaces and wetlands even in our cities. We should also be glad that we ended the frenzied hacking into hillsides to perch little houses there. One can’t bear imagine what would happen to those structures in the face of nature’s fury at the abuse of the hills. Climate change may be a villain here. But the buildings that block the flow of water and those who build them, what shall we call them?

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Floods: payback time for man's greed