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Thousands alter their lives in flooded West Africa
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 12 - 09 - 2009


The only piece of furniture that
survived the most recent flood in Fat Dione's house is her
bed. It's propped up on cinderblocks and hovers just above
the water lapping at the walls of her bedroom, AP reported.
The water stands a foot (more than 30 centimeters) deep
throughout her house. She shakes off her wet feet each time
she climbs into her bed. To keep it dry, she tries to place
her feet on the same spot so that only one corner of her
mattress becomes moist.
Torrential rains have lashed Africa's western coast for
the past three months, killing 159 people and flooding the
homes and businesses of over 600,000 others, according to
the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs.
They include the patients of one of Burkina Faso's largest
hospitals who had to be carried out on gurneys after water
invaded the wards. They include those living on the banks
of a river in northern Niger, whose homes were swept away
when a dike burst under the weight of the rain. And they
also include tens of thousands of people like Dione whose
homes took on a foot or less of water and whose ordeals are
not a priority for the country's overwhelmed emergency
response teams.
While the rains have been extreme, people are also to
blame, said Col. Singhane Diagne, spokesman for the
country's firefighters. The home where Dione lives should
never have been built, he said. During the droughts of the
1970s, people began illegally building houses in the
low-lying marshes that surround Dakar, the Senegalese
capital. When the drought ended and the rains returned,
these bowl-shaped neighborhoods began to flood.
«Every year we pump the same houses. Not just once. Over
and over. You pump the water out _ and it comes right back.
Like a boomerang,» says Diagne. «These people need to
leave.»
Among the six countries where the flooding has been most
severe _ Senegal, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Niger, and
Ghana _ the neighborhoods most affected are the poor ones.
Typically these communities are the result of urban sprawl,
built without municipal approval, using unsafe materials.
In Ouagadougou, the hard-hit capital of Burkina Faso, many
of the flooded homes were made of nothing more than clay.
In Senegal, the government has built a satellite community
of around 150 homes outside the flood plain, but the homes
are already nearly full. The U.N. estimates that just in
Senegal, 264,000 people have been affected by flooding. And
although many families say their homes flood every year,
they say that they do not have the money to move.


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