Thursday morning around 3:00, I was woken up by shrieking and noise coming from outside. Eileen, Silivia and Emmanuel's oldest daughter, was sleeping above me, and told me we should go outside. We climbed through the door, to hear people yelling and small points of light coming from the road. There was a dull roar - sounding like the ocean - coming from up the road. 'People are being swept by water,' Silivia was yelling in Luo, which Eileen translated for me. All we could do was sit on the stoop, small flash light pointed at the yard, not being able to see or know exactly what was happening.
Silivia returned, explaining that water was sweeping everything on the road, that she had been called by the driver of the van at Abba, whose home was under water. She told us to sleep until there was light. We crawled back into our beds around 430, shivering and falling into a half sleep until 615.
I climbed out of bed, pulling my rain jacket and gum boots on, and strapping my camera around my chest. I found Silivia, and we began to walk towards the bridge that I run to in the morning. People filled the road, the only high point that was not under water. I stood over water that was rushing as fast as a river, sounding so similar to the Pacific Ocean - I momentarily forgot where I was. Cattle were being herded through knee deep water as we pushed our way on, passing people shivering and carrying shoes.
The further we walked, the more water there seemed to be. Groups of people were clustered all over this road - looking like the entire village was present. We walked all the way to the bridge, at times water so deep it entered into my gumboots. You could not tell where the river began and where it ended. Everything was surrounded by water.
Peoples' homes were covered. At first, people just watched the water, then realizing it was not receding, waded to their homes to pull things out. The mud and stick frames were not going to last for long. Tables, couches, clothes were floated towards the dry ground from homes. Animals that were stuck shrieked, with owners unable to reach them. Snakes passed us. Everything was water.
We started walking back home, coming to a woman's house that I had interviewed at the beginning of this year. She just stood, staring at her home in horror, until finally someone broke the back side of her house. I crawled into waist deep water to join the line of people passing her belongings to dry land. We continued when most of her things were out, only to come to another home that had the same fate.
Silivia and I climbed onto a piki piki to see the rest of the area. We headed towards Nyangweso - the large market that people go to on Thursdays. Before reaching, we saw three of the people that work at Abba, their homes destroyed with their belongings outside. People owning shops sifted through flour coated with water, swollen rice and beans - their shops and stores destroyed. The water had passed first through Nyangsweso - leaving marks above my head on shops where it had reached, knocking most restaurants and shops to the ground. People placed their goods out to dry - powdery white flour and packets of bread littering the ground.
We returned to Abba, where thankfully water had begun to drain - although it was knee deep in some classrooms. Silivia's clinic was covered in water, making the floor a muddy mess, while she drew up lidocaine to inject a patient with a toothache who had come.
The initial explanation was that it had rained heavily in the hills, swelling a river so much that it spilled over everything. That in combination with the construction of a new road that lacks proper drainage systems caused flooding that hasn't been experienced since 2005. People cried against the companies that had made this road. I read in today's paper that the group that was working on an irrigation scheme was to blame - that their major goal in West Kochia was to stop flooding, which it seems to have increased.
The biggest problem now is that most peoples' homes are destroyed. The water drained quickly - although soggy lakes still remain, unable to soak into the black cotton soil. Fields of crops have been destroyed - especially devastating after an extra long season of drought. People don't know where to rebuild - afraid that this will just occur again, and struggling for the large resources it takes to construct new homes.
I have not asked for much in this blog - besides the occasional supportive email, but this one is different. I have watched the community that has been my home for 9 months be washed over with water - no helicopters or aid coming to help. If you are willing to donate to help people rebuild their homes, please send me an email rachelmclark2@gmail.com. Anything and everything is appreciated.
