Let’s work together to stop floods

The recent rains remind me of how poor our drainage system is. All you have to do is look at the roads every time it rains to know there is something fundamentally wrong with our infrastructure. And the most ridiculous thing about all this is that it has been happening since time immemorial. It is as if we are supposed to learn to live with the floods and normalise them. I have never travelled to other countries so I don’t know whether it is the same case elsewhere.

Do rain floods paralyse movement from one place to another  in other countries too or is it just us? Do people have to be carried from one side of the road to another, do cars “drown” in mini rivers?  And for those countries that have managed to solve this problem, how did they do it? Can we learn from them? What role can we all play in trying to create a clean and flood-free country?

I know for sure that  if we followed a well-organised garbage dumping system, we would not have to deal with the consequences of a clogged drainage system. I also know that if we stopped settling in water catchment areas, we wouldn’t mess up the eco-system and the water would  follow a natural drainage flow. What I don’t know is why we don’t do these things  and yet continue to cry foul.

Every so often we wake up to huge factories built in what we all know to be swampy areas and yet we say nothing. 
I wonder who we think will speak up for us. We have abused our environment way too much to expect any favours from nature.

There’s a song by the Swedish pop group,  Ace of Bace titled, Everytime it rains. The chorus of that song says, “Cause every time it rains, I fall to pieces.  So many memories the rain releases, I feel you, I taste you. I cannot forget. Every time it rains, I get wet”.  

Well, here is a Ugandan rendition of those lines. “Every time it rains, Uganda falls to pieces. So much sewage and dirt and all manner of garbage the rain releases. We smell it, we are even doused in it, every time it rains. 
Seriously though,  we must do something about our drainage system and  put an end to this man-made mess. 

Sanyu Chewunyo,
Jinja