Elizabeth Wangeci Chege

Nairobi city has become a total mess! People running for their lives as floodwaters swept through the streets. Cars floating. People climbing onto rooftops and on cars. Families trying to save what they can. And the thing that keeps coming to my mind is this: this rain was not a surprise. Meteorologists warned about very heavy rains days ago. Yet within hours our city is overwhelmed; roads become rivers, homes flood, businesses are destroyed, and people lose lives, livelihoods and everything. .. a pattern that we see reoccurring each time we have heavy rains. Yes, climate change is making our weather more extreme. That is real. But when rain turns into disaster this quickly, it also tells a story about our city. A story about drainage systems that don’t work. About wetlands that have disappeared. About buildings rising everywhere without proper planning, including on riparian land. A story of non-existent storm water drainage system. This cannot be normal and I don’t think people are angry enough! We have a long way to go on disaster preparedness, emergency response, and leadership that takes these realities seriously. Because what we are witnessing today is the cost of ignoring the climate reality we are living in. And now there is another silent crisis growing beneath our feet; the explosion of undocumented boreholes across Nairobi. More than half of the boreholes in this city are believed to be unregulated. No clear monitoring. No clear understanding of what it is doing to our groundwater systems. We are draining the aquifers below us while paving over the natural systems that protected us above. Floods on the surface. Water insecurity underground.