Lord, here comes the flood

Never having lived in an area that is susceptible to flooding, I guess i have some preconceptions that are proving to be wrong. From whatever news casts and such that I've seen I had the idea that flooding was a short duration event, the water came, did its damage and left.

That's definitely not the case here.

There's been some flooding in my area for the past five weeks. This first photo shows how the water has moved to the edge of the main road in Ohangwena (my town). The left side of the photo, in the distance, is the T intersection between our graded road and highway B1.The water wasn't gaining, but it wasn't receding either. The local low points, which had been filled with stagnant rainwater, were drying out completely. I figured that the worst was over.

Wrong.

The rains have come back with a vengeance here, but even before they arrived here, they hit up north of us. The water that has been lying here is not from local rainfall, but is runoff from the rivers in Angola. When those rivers recently got a new surge of rainfall, our town took a big hit.

The main road in town, the only on that connects with the highway, is now bisected by a river.

In this picture, the river has only just broken through. Within the next day, it would carve a channel both twice as wide and twice as deep.

Also, in the town proper, the lessor roads are mainly submerged. This truck is following a fairly major road in town.

Even on the roads that are still walkable, the "gravel," which is a kind of sand, has reached its saturation point. You really get the feel for what quicksand would be like (nowhere nearly that dangerous but) when you put down your foot on a piece of ground that looks exactly like it did yesterday, but today your foot submerges three or four inches.

Oshikango, the border town to the north has been hit hard also. Part of this is being blamed on development that has seen natural casements filled in to make room for commercial expansion without reservoirs being built to compensate.

Look at this construction site.The whole foundation of the building has been submerged.

Local homesteads are being washed away. They are made from wood as often as concrete. In the foreground of this picture is the remains of a traditional homestead that's been severely damaged by the water.

Even as this is going on, our school, which is on high ground, has been designated as a resource point for relief and aid. Before our road was cut off, the road to Engela hospital was swept away, cutting that hospital off from all paved roads.

This is the road to Engela. You can see how strong the current is in the photo, If you look closely, you can also see the temporary bridge that the army has constructed for pedestrians. That bridge is incredibly unstable, and the soldiers limit the number of people on it at any time.

In this picture, you can see how the road's bedrock has been eaten away by the water. This is the downstream side, not the side taking the brunt of the pressure from the water.

Helicopters were used to transport non-critical patients and supplies from Engela hospital to our soccer field, where ambulances were waiting to take them on to other facilities.

At one point, the large helicopter actually had to sit and wait for a fuel truck to show up and refuel it.

Also, the local circuit has designated our school as a refuge point for students and teachers. This truck is bringing teachers' furniture and supplies from flooded schools to our houses.

The army has supplied us with tents for learners who can't get home safely.

This is what the inside of one of those tents looks like:

The student on the right is Johannes Ricardo, I don't know the other student's name. The tent looked like it was sleeping six, but it was hard to tell.

There are daily stories about people drowning trying to cross various flood points. For now, the road to our town is relatively safe, as the water is only knee-deep and there are soldiers there monitoring the crossing. Also, construction crews have arrived with concrete boxes that will eventually make a bridge over the river, allowing foot traffic without hindering the water.

The flooding has brought with it any number of problems. Along with the obvious drowning, all this standing water has led to a breeding ground for mosquitoes, so malaria warnings are up. The overflowing of the water into sewage systems has led to an outbreak of Cholera, a highly infectious and possibly fatal disease. Also, the water is infested with snails, which carry a unpleasant but non-lethal bacteria (you pee blood until you get it treated). We've also had (I wouldn't call it a plague, but) an outbreak of caterpillars, which are eating the local crops. And snakes really like this weather.

UPDATE: The fooding is almost completely gone, and many vehicles can now get into or out of Ohangwena without using the bridge at all. At the end of April, just before I left on vacation, this is what the road now looked like:

You can see that the water is almost completely gone.