Wednesday Walk: keeping check on the river; the flood has arrived.

4 months ago

I was quite worried about the possibility of flooding in my area as the rain in the northern parts of the country have been very frequent. Though we still had rain at night, the rain was light and short lived. My premonition in the summer seemed to have come true. Last summer we saw severe drought along the river which made it possible to cross the river on foot to the other side in some places. It signified that some dams in Laos and China had been hoarding water for their agricultural areas. They didn’t consider good water management and information about excessive rainfall in rainy season.

I told my gardener the reason why I didn’t want to plant expensive fruit trees in the banana groves. I was afraid there would be altogether three severe floodings along the river. Two bad floodings had already occurred during the last ten years. So, my gardener thought there would be no more bad flooding. The rising level of the river was quite slow at first, so most people thought it would be very light flooding for a day or two.

I had a uneasy feeling so I had to cycle along the river in the afternoon to check out the river. It seemed that some water had seeped through rain pipes along the river. People were still east going about slight flooding in some areas. I had to follow up the news about the flooding situation in three provinces in the north. The rainstorm became more frequent in the northern part too.

This extra rainfall should certainly affect people in Laos too. But it’s very difficult to find any news on floodings in Laos. The Thai politicians and government were too busy with their power transition problems. No one was proactive in their responsibility towards their people. They didn’t take any initiative to start query the Chinese and Laos about their water management situations and flooding in their countries. There was no spirit of mutual concern and cooperation on preventing flooding along the river. Local people had to solve their problems as they couldn’t depend on their government.

I could see that the river has become very reddish brown with very strong currents. The cows living on the riverbank had to move away from the edge of the river. The owner of these cows would have to move them away when the river overflowed its bank. That meant all people in the fishermen’s village had to be evacuated too. I guessed they were quietly hoping that the river would subside soon. I cycled around keeping an eye on the seeping water into the fields with trepidation.

However, we had gone through the impact of having three dams in China collapsed over ten years ago. At that time, thx river came up four meters in one night. That was very scary for villagers. My land was still empty of fruit trees and hadn’t been developed yet. So, there was no damage. But the second flood a few years ago was very bad for my garden. We lost mist of the fruit trees and banana trees. I had to start the planting of trees all over again. Luckily my friend gave me many tree saplings to refurbish the garden.

We hoped that the Chinese and Lao governments would try to avoid the same old mistakes. But politicians and administrators weren’t normal people who didn’t have to play political games rather than working for the well being of all people. They had very different priorities from ordinary hard working people.

My gardener was quite concerned about many fruit trees and papaya trees which were giving lots of small fruits. If these trees were under water longer than one week, they might not survive the flooding ordeal. So, I hoped and prayed that the heavy rain would stop and those powerful people who controlled those dams would respond to severe flooding situations in our country.