When Climate Change Meets Poor Governance (+ videos)
March 22by Joyce Wachau Chege
On March 7 of this year, I remember sending my mum a text at 12:32 am, letting her know I had just got home.
I had left work at the usual time, 5 pm. I got to town but as I was walking to catch a bus, the rain came pouring down so hard. For a moment, I thought it was normal rain, that it would do its thing for a few minutes and then stop. But how wrong I was! The rain patterns have changed and are no longer predictable.
I found a building where I could shelter from the storm. And by a storm, I mean no exaggeration. The thunder and lightning were undeniable. The two women who were selling clothes on the floor along the street had closed up and like everyone else, they waited for the rain to subside. We waited and waited and waited but the water levels kept rising and so did the anxiety.
I was wet, scared and mad! Scared because the rain was not stopping and mad because from where I stood, I witnessed six people fall in potholes because of the flooding. “Nooo! Don’t pass there! Go round” the women would scream at the top of their lungs to warn the people trying to cross the road. I was mad because this is a road we cross all the time and not everyone knows of the potholes that are strategically hidden, left like that after the pavement construction was done. Why do we pay taxes if such things cannot be fixed? Nairobi City, the biggest city in the country and yet, what I personally witnessed that night, was nothing short of a horror!
My phone kept on ringing and I knew it was my mother, calling to check if I managed to get home but every time I answered, the answer was still the same “I haven’t moved from where I am, the rain is really bad.”
By the time I decided that come what may, I had to get to the bus station, water was halfway up to my knees. Just the thought that I was walking in water mixed with sewage because the drains were all clogged up, made me feel dirty; I swore and most of all, felt betrayed. Betrayed by a government that is always waiting for their dues when the salaries come in, but fails to deliver on ensuring the city is ready for such emergencies.
Pay the government what belongs to the government and to that which belongs to God, please pay it diligently to the government also!
When I got to the house at 12:32 am, I could not help but think of all the people I had left in town stranded, trying to figure out a way to get home; families displaced who had their houses flooded, had their businesses and cars swept away by the floods. Sadly enough, I thought about the people who lost their souls that night.
So, days later when the Nairobi Governor, Johnson Sakaja sat in that interview at Citizen TV, brushing the whole issue off ever so lightly and uttering words like “What do people want me to do?,” it broke my heart so bad.
The devil works hard, but Kenyan leaders work harder at being so bad at the jobs they got elected for.
