When The River Came To My Doorstep

Olaitan was deep in sleep and having one of his best dreams ever. In the dream, he was a Kung Fu fighter and he was fighting alongside Jackie Chan and Stephen Segal. Their mission was to rescue the abducted daughter of some top US politician from a dangerous terrorist group. Laitan had just landed a scissors kick that broke the neck of his opponent when he felt the rough, insistent tapping on his arm. He opened his eyes reluctantly and saw his sister's face above him. Laitan grunted, he should have known it was just a dream, but those moves felt so real!

Laitan knew his sister was saying something, but he couldn't exactly make out the words. He closed his eyes and rolled over away from the sound of her nagging voice. He hoped he would be able to fall asleep and continue his dream from where he left off. But Olaide just wouldn't let him be, she was shaking him now, and then he heard what she was saying. Olaitan sat up quickly. He realized that the noise he had been hearing hadn't been from his fight, but from the sound of thunder, strong winds and heavy rainfall outside. It was raining heavily, and that only meant one thing here - flood!

Immediately Olaide saw he was awake, she had left to go do other things. Olaitan jumped out of bed and quickly shut his windows, then he hurried out of the room to join the others. His parents were gathering buckets already, in case the water began to enter from underneath the door, his sister was getting rags from around the house to stuff under the front door. Everyone was moving around with urgency. Olaitan looked up at the clock in the sitting room, it was only 4 am. Suddenly, the power went off. Olaitan knocked against the furniture as he fumbled about to find a lamp.

Olaitan and his sister pressed their faces against the windows, trying to see how bad the situation was outside, they dared not open the doors. It had been long since they had such heavy rain, and the community had made gutters all over the streets, but with this kind of rain, the fear was that the gutters might not be deep enough to contain the flood. Olaitan and Olaide were still looking through the window when they heard their mother's urgent call - water had started seeping in under the doors.

The rain did not relent till dawn began to break, and even after that, Olaitan and his family were still struggling to bail water off their floor. His parents scooped the water into buckets, while Olaitan and his sister kept running to pour the water down the drain and bring the buckets back to be refilled. On and on they slaved, until the water stopped coming in. It was daylight already now, Olaitan again looked up at the clock and saw that it was 7:23 am. Whew! What a morning!

They all collapsed in a heap, resting out the last 3 hours of labour. They had to get up again soon to start evaluating the damage. Luckily, it was not too bad, just the lower parts of the chairs were affected. The chairs and the whole room would need airing. Olaitan opened the door and went outside, the streets were still flooded, the gutters overflowing. He could hear the voices of his neighbors who were still trying to get the water out of their homes. It was a sorry situation, a dire one too.

Olaitan thought to himself that the people of his community didn't need ordinary gutters, they needed really deep ones and canals! But more than the canals, they needed a serious change of attitude. Olaitan was certain the flood would not have been so bad if only the residents had not stockpiled their refuse in the new gutters that had been made.