I’m always grateful for the fact that the country where I’m from, Nigeria doesn’t experience so many natural disasters. And if we do, it is mostly as an effect of our ignorant behaviors.
This takes me back to sometime ago when I resided in a part of Lagos, known as Bariga. So many people call it waterside because it is very close to the Atlantic ocean.
I was a new resident there and when we got to the rainy season, I wasn’t prepared for it. I thought it would be like every other rainy season of the various places I have stayed but this happened differently.
It was on my birthday, sixteenth of July, four years ago. The rain started to fall heavily from morning and I had plans to step out after the rain. Hopefully, I rushed out to the room next to me to get my make up done so I will dash out after the rain stops.
Suddenly, I heard a loud noise from my room like something fell down or something huge descended on the roof of my room. I picked up my umbrella and halted the make up.
On opening the door, it was disastrous. I couldn’t step out of the room because if I do, I’ll be carried away by the rain.
I stayed back and hoped nothing bad had happened to my room. I went online and to my surprise, flood was the latest trend. I saw different posts of people posting up pictures and videos of what flood has done to their area and when I checked for Bariga, it was indeed disastrous. It felt like we wouldn’t be able to step out for days.
While still gisting with my friend during the make up, we started seeing some water gushing into the room, then I knew it wasn’t a joke. The more we tried to lift some of her properties, the more the water gushed into the room.
Finally, after about six hours after the rain stopped, I could go to my room again. Truly, it was flooded and the water was reaching my knee. I just wanted to check what had happened to my room.
On reaching my room, I got to see that the heavy breeze had blown off my roof and my room was looking exactly like a swimming pool.
I suspended the outing because the whole environment was looking bad, flooded and you wouldn’t even be able to see the floor.
It’s a bad experience which I would never want to encounter anymore.
