CHAD: Flood victims contend with thugs, cholera and hippos
Residents of Walia use makeshift bridges to get around. Photo:Nancy Palus/IRIN
Below is an article from IRIN (UN). The flooding in Chad and elsewhere in the region has been getting far too little coverage in the Western media. Many areas in Chad and beyond are experiencing a level of rainfall and flooding that hasn’t been seen for 50 years. Chad has suffered through several years of drought and although the rains may provide relief in some places, flooding is wreaking havoc in many parts of the country. Villages and farms have been destroyed; flooded fields are particularly worrisome in Chad where hunger is already a problem.
The tragic irony: All the oil money in the world can’t prevent torrential rain and flooding, and given the likelihood that the floods are related to global climate change, oil may be in part to blame for the situation. The question now, however, is whether the government of Chad has — or will — use its oil revenues to improve the country’s infrastructure. Improved sanitation, roads and the construction of canals and dykes are critical moving forward.
WALIA, 17 November 2010 (IRIN) – Scores of families recently displaced by flooding in the Chadian capital N’djamena face a daily struggle against local thugs, wild animals, a lack of toilets and night winds that knock down makeshift tents.
The Chad government announced in late October that it would relocate thousands of people hit by flooding when the River Chari burst its banks, but any such move will take time; in the meantime families whose homes crumbled are just getting by – new hardships adding to what were already tough living conditions in their neighbourhood of Walia.
“We are exposed to too many dangers here,” said Obed Langkal, seated with other residents of the tents and makeshift shelters set up on a stretch of land between a main road and the river. “We cannot rest comfortably at all.”
