Wanton Nature
When a natural disater like this strikes, it is the tiny details that i tend to relate with rather than the sheer, often urgly, size.
This is so, not just because it highlights our vulnerability and helpless before the lurid antics of nature; it brings to bare the the rapidity at which human sophistication can fold back to the basics.
The continuing flooding of large areas of land across Nigeria is quite phenomenal in both size and destruction, but nothing is more striking to me than the duggedness of the victims in the face of such wanton display. You'd see people paddling canoe through, now inuandated, streets they once walked and worked and took life a little less seriously, houses sitting tight in water to drive home the fact they are mere inanimates and could do nothing their owners couldn't, children swimming and splashing in the same water that has rendered them refugees.
Watching from the comfort of my home - safty of my tv set - i tried to imaging my couch soaked to the arm but cringed, couldn't hold that thought any longer than a while. But then this is some other peoples' reality; people not very far from me. People with homes they couldn't return to. People whose meals will come from goodwill because their only sources of livelihoods lie between the ground and metres deep water.
I heard a friend mutter of one of our popular refrains whenever we are confronted with issues we'd rather wish away; "God forbid".
But could this really be happening in Nigeria?
Maybe i am not alone.A few weeks ago many of the victims could have seen this same ravaging flood on their screens without imagining their very reality in it. For me, this singular incident will remain a nagging reminder that no one is really safe, more so in the face of nature.
Jud e Ifeme
This is so, not just because it highlights our vulnerability and helpless before the lurid antics of nature; it brings to bare the the rapidity at which human sophistication can fold back to the basics.
The continuing flooding of large areas of land across Nigeria is quite phenomenal in both size and destruction, but nothing is more striking to me than the duggedness of the victims in the face of such wanton display. You'd see people paddling canoe through, now inuandated, streets they once walked and worked and took life a little less seriously, houses sitting tight in water to drive home the fact they are mere inanimates and could do nothing their owners couldn't, children swimming and splashing in the same water that has rendered them refugees.
Watching from the comfort of my home - safty of my tv set - i tried to imaging my couch soaked to the arm but cringed, couldn't hold that thought any longer than a while. But then this is some other peoples' reality; people not very far from me. People with homes they couldn't return to. People whose meals will come from goodwill because their only sources of livelihoods lie between the ground and metres deep water.
I heard a friend mutter of one of our popular refrains whenever we are confronted with issues we'd rather wish away; "God forbid".
But could this really be happening in Nigeria?
Maybe i am not alone.A few weeks ago many of the victims could have seen this same ravaging flood on their screens without imagining their very reality in it. For me, this singular incident will remain a nagging reminder that no one is really safe, more so in the face of nature.
Jud e Ifeme
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