Drying Out

This week there were tremendous rain storms and flash floods that hit Accra. I've never seen anything like this before and many Ghanaians have said the same. It started on Monday night with a ridiculous rain and wind storm. Around 5:30 the sky turned to black and the heavens opened and rain just unloaded. The wind was so strong I actually worried that the new high rise apartment building in front of our apartment was going to come down. The next morning we saw the damage which included the metal canopy for cars in front of our apartment collapsing. Luckily it collapsed in a parking space where there was no car.

Alan and I sort of thought this was just some weird weather passing through until Tuesday night, the same thing happened. I was up a few times with Eli during the night and at each waking watched the rain as it just kept coming down. Then Wednesday morning at 7:00am I got a call from Rita who explained that her house had flooded because of the rains and she couldn't come to work. I thought it was perhaps because her house is in a low lying area. But, then we learned of what the storm really did to the city. We live in a little bubble here in the Villaggio Primavera and if we did not interact with people outside this bubble, we would have had no idea what the rest of Accra was dealing with on Wednesday.

Frank arrived to work miraculously and explained that he had to walk through water waist deep to get to our house and he even showed me a picture on his phone of what he had to walk through. I can imagine that in many more developed countries that kind of commute would definitely be a deterrent for showing up to work but not here. Alan reported that the Guinness plant had also flooded (right in the middle of their audit no less) but they quickly got things dried out and all will be ok.

As I ran a few errands with Frank later in the day, we saw pockets that had really been flooded. People were laying all their things out in the yard to dry, shop owners were surveying their losses, and I caught a glimpse of a few faces that really showed what devastation this was for them. And when I think about it, it is really hard to imagine that in such poverty and with so little safety net, one or two nights of heavy rain can wash away everything that many people have worked for years to save for or to build. There is no homeowners' insurance here and I when I mentioned the idea to Rita, she was shocked to learn that in other parts of the world, such a thing exists.

The sun is finally shining and last night the rains didn't come so hopefully this is the end of it.