Natural disasters are one of the biggest tragedy facing many nations of the world today. All over the news, we hear cases of 'Tsunamis, Volcanic eruptions, Earthquakes' and most commonly 'Floods'.
If you have not experienced any of these disasters in your country, you should be very grateful to your God. Thousands of people die and loss their properties every year as a result of these disasters.
I am from the South Southern part of Nigeria, and our region is called the Niger Delta, because it is a riverine area. This part of Nigeria is covered with more of water than land.
Infact, this part of the country is where the treasure-base of the nation is located (Crude Oil). We have so many natural resources here, but the problem we face every year is the continuous rainfalls and flooding.
It was on one of these constant rainfalls that something disastrous happened to me and my household. It was already evening and darkness was gradually covering the sky. It was raining heavily as usual, and I was the only one at home that evening.
I was on the bed for hours busy watching some documentaries online with my phone, while it rained. The rain had lasted for about 4 hours non-stop, so I decided to get out of bed and make something hot for myself.
On stepping my foot from the bed to the ground, I realized that there was so much water in the house. Infact my bed was soaking all along. I had never been that confused in my life, as I wondered if the world was about to come to an end.
By this time, the other rooms in the house were flooded, and the rain wasn't showing any sign of stopping. So many things went wrong at the same time, and I was helplessly watching my properties getting spoiled.
I tried to go outside in order to observe how intense the rain had been, but as I approached the door, I realized the water level became even deeper. This was my first major experience of flooding, and I was dumbfounded.
My books and other important documents had already been soaked in the water inside the house. Infact everything that was on the ground was affected. It was a traumatizing loss that was too great to handle at that time.
And to make things worse, I was alone on that night of the flood invasion. This was a natural disaster, and it was way over my control, I thought to myself. All I could do was to find a place to park to for safety.
I survived that night, and stayed in that house throughout the night. On the next morning when I came outside, I nearly laughed, because people were literally swimming out of their houses with their loads.
The whole street was flooded, and the water kept increasing. I immediately called my parents and relatives to come to my aid, as I was totally confused on where to begin from.
I thought I would never recover from such a disaster, because I lost properties worth thousands of dollars. We even heard cases of death on some areas as a result of this same flood.
This flood affected alot of operations in my area at that time, because they was no road for the transportation of goods, resources and services. The prices of various things went up, and life' trouble was at it's All Time Highest (ATH), lol.
I learned something very interesting about myself from this experience, and that is "the never giving up instinct". I knew of a man that committed sucide because his millions of Naira that was withdrew for a project got lost in that flood.
It was really hard to bear the losses, but the fact remains that when there's life there's hope for a better future. Giving up has never been an option for me, and never will it be.
There was a time we went back to the house with a boat to recover our Television that was hanging on the wall, bit the water level was too high, so we went back and left the TV to it's fate, lol. In all these, I still came out strong and better.
