Dar is sinking

In Dar es Salaam it has been raining heavily for the last three days and the city is flooded! Me, the whole of ICD staff and thousands of other people were stuck at whichever place they happened to be when the roads got closed down, one after the other, after all the bridges got flooded with water. Thousands of homes were swept away, people could not return home from their offices, cars were stuck on the roads for hours.

I was on ICD annual retreat in Mbezi, on the outskirts of Dar, about 30 min drive from my home. Yet after the retreat was finished, there was no way to leave, because the bridge over Mbezi river (usually nothing but a small stream) got damaged.

My colleagues called all their friends to get info on passable ways - there were none. We spent an extra night at the hotel, watching the photos of Dar under water being shown on TV. On the next morning, we called in the people who really had the current infos (Tanzanian television is useless when it comes to informing): the taxi and bus drivers! They drove us to the bridge, where we dogded the army and joined hundreds of other people crossing the bridge on foot. On the other side buses were waiting to bring us to town.

The chain of people crossing Mbezi bridge on foot in heavy rain

What the TV did tell us is that these have been the heaviest rains since 1954.