Floods in 1987

The floods took place around September 1987. I was just in Std 9 (Grade 11). The rain had come down for several weeks. To me at least, it seemed like weeks. The ground was wet and it was strange not to be able to go outside and do routine stuff.  For what seemed like an eternity of rain, there came a day when sun appeared to shine.

Little did I know what lay in store? I grew up in F section and lived below road level. As I looked out of our lounge door, all I could see was a bank with wild grass. If I raised my gaze; I could see the barriers protecting the drivers from rolling their vehicles over and landing on the asbestos roof of the house. Worse, they could land on our beds, crushing our bodies into a powder pulp.

Getting back to the story, there were times where I could hear my grandfather warning my mother not to remove the grass from the banks. He never provided an explanation, save to say that it should just be left alone. To my mother, it looked untidy and she wanted to clean up the yard. That was indeed a warning sign.

After days of rain, the earth became soft. One afternoon, while sitting indoors, I heard a loud thump. It was as if one of the cars had fallen onto the house. To my amazement, I found a barrage of mud, brown mud, and wet mud in our lounge. When I see pictures of how lava flows down the mountains after a volcano, this was the experience of the mud. It came into all the rooms and exited through the kitchen door. This happened, and the rain came down. In my small mind, I felt helpless, hopeless and was homeless. 

This incident was not unique to us. As the day went on, we heard more stories of other families that were afflicted by this calamity. We moved around the township and I saw parts of retaining walls that held up banks which had fallen. In the ghettos the road became blocked because a large chunk of earth had been sucked out as a result of the rain. From the Ghetto’s I saw a large chunk of the railway track had been swept away by the rain. This was a horror movie and I was one of the protagonists.

To cut a long story short, we were moved into the Mariannridge High school hall. The living arrangements were tantamount to living in a refugee camp. There were about seven families who resided in the hall for a period of what seemed like four months. Fortunately my two aunts were also part of these new living arrangements. Our common experience of the disaster created a new bond in the family. With the other families, we became extended family.

However, no one got to talk about the trauma we all experience. A piece of our lives went with the floods. Fortunately, there was no loss of life and that was indeed a blessing.

I must say that I learnt some lessons from the experience. Some are that I would need to have my own home that was above road level. The home that I lived in would be of a sound structure. Also, I should have insurance to protect myself in the event of loss.