Dear Accra,
Mother of mosquitoes, damsel in ditches, capital of accidental swimming pools — I write to you not from my desk, but from my kitchen ceiling, where I have taken refuge with three buckets, one plastic Jesus, and an expired ECG bill floating proudly past me like a small national flag.
This is not a letter, Sikaman. This is a message in a bottle — written in advance, in case the floods come before WhatsApp finishes loading, and we are forced to return to the aquatic epistolary tradition of our ancestors.
Because June is coming, my brother. And we both know what that means.
GMet has already issued the warning — above-normal rainfall expected along the eastern coastline through June, including Accra, Tema, Cape Coast, Saltpond, Koforidua, and Kade. But Sikaman, we did not need GMet to tell us. You see those small black clouds gathering over Achimota at 3:45pm on a Tuesday? That is GMet. Every Ghanaian over the age of six has been issuing his own private rainfall forecasts since 1992. Our knees ache before the rain comes. Our grandmothers smell it in the morning air. The kelewele woman covers her stove with one piece of polythene without explanation. We know, Sikaman. We have always known. The problem has never been prediction. The problem has always been that knowing the rain is coming and building a city that can survive the rain turn out to be two completely different national skills, and Accra has mastered only the first. Goodreads
You, Accra, are not just a city. You are a bowl turned upside down. A sink with dreams. A wetland pretending to be West London. When the rain comes, you do not just receive it — you inhale it. The gutters cough. The streets baptise pedestrians. The trotro mates evolve, in the space of one afternoon, into qualified lifeguards. It is here, my brother, that the ordinary Ghanaian transforms into an amphibian.
But let us be specific about this year, Sikaman, because the floods of 2026 have already begun their introductions.
On the morning of 29 March 2026 — Palm Sunday, my brother, the holiest morning of the Christian calendar — heavy overnight rains swept Accra. The Ghana Navy was forced to rescue fourteen children from the floodwaters. Families in Nima and Alajo were displaced. Palm Sunday trading came to a complete standstill. Modern Ghana
Sikaman. On Palm Sunday. The donkey was supposed to be the only transport in the news that day. Instead, the navy was launching rescue operations in a capital city that has been a capital city since 1877. We are the only country in the world where the navy is the secondary disaster response for land-based residential neighbourhoods. The marines do not have to swim out to sea anymore. The sea has, with the patience of a long-suffering elder, come to them.
And the worst part, charley, is that we were not surprised. Nobody was surprised. The news anchor reading the report on Joy News was not surprised. The Honourable Minister who appeared at the site in his rolled-up trousers was not surprised. The driver dodging the floodwater on the Spintex road was not surprised. We had been here before. We had been here in 2015, when 126 Ghanaians died because the Odaw River, choked with our own rubbish, could not handle three days of June rain. We have been returning to the same scene every year since. Same rain. Same gutters. Same buckets. Same surprised-faced minister. Same dead Odaw River. Booksafricana
The Odaw, Sikaman — let me speak of the Odaw for a moment, because she is the silent victim of this story. The Odaw was once a river. A real river. She drained most of Accra. She flowed honestly into the Korle Lagoon and from there to the sea. Now she is, by international scientific measurement, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. We have stuffed her mouth with sachets, fridges, mattresses, motorcycle parts, and one entire generation of plastic bags. We have built malls on her shoulders and guest houses on her hips. And every June, when the rain comes, she throws all of it back at us. Politely. With interest. That is not flooding, Sikaman. That is the Odaw River filing a long-overdue complaint.
How did we get here? Because we built Accra like a jollof recipe from TikTok — no measurements, just vibes. We blocked rivers with malls. We covered wetlands with guest houses. We renamed flood plains “prime real estate” and sold them to people who shall now be paddling to work. The gutters of Accra are no longer drainage infrastructure; they are Instagram reels of plastic choreography, performing twice yearly to acclaim audiences that cannot reach the office.
Every June, the government performs its Sacred Ritual of Observation. One minister, three bodyguards, and one borrowed canoe appear on the evening news. “We are assessing the situation,” they say — knee-deep in water, posing beside a floating sachet of pure water branded “Hope.” But Sikaman, we are not fooled. We know the real assessment happened months earlier, in March, when the desilting contract was awarded to a cousin who did desilt the gutters — and then left the desilted silt sitting on the curb, in small black mountains, waiting for the first rain to wash it directly back into the gutters it had just been removed from. This, my brother, is fully audited circular economy. The IMF should commission a study.
And then there is Madam Mansah, my landlady’s sister, who lives in Dansoman. Madam Mansah owns one fridge, one foam mattress, and seven framed photographs of her late husband. When the Palm Sunday floods came through Dansoman this March, Madam Mansah lost the mattress, three of the photographs, and the bottom shelf of the fridge. She has now placed everything on bricks. Bricks, Sikaman. The woman is 67 years old. She is living in a house where every piece of furniture is elevated four inches above the floor, like a small Sikaman museum exhibit titled “Things That Survived the Government.” Madam Mansah does not blame the rain. She blames the gutter. She does not blame the gutter exactly. She blames the cousin who got the desilting contract. She knows his name. She knows where he lives. And every June, when the rain comes and her mattress floats once again toward the door, Madam Mansah whispers his name like a small incantation. That, Sikaman, is who is paying for our urban planning. Wikipedia
So before the June rains arrive in full force, Accra, I have a few small questions for you. Politely posed. Without anger:
When shall our gutters be deeper than our excuses? When shall drainage compete with campaign budgets? When shall we stop building monuments to negligence and start building culverts? When shall the cousin who got the desilting contract be assessed — properly assessed — under whichever Section of whichever Act we still have on the books?
Until those days come, Sikaman, the youth of Accra have begun what every functioning society would call “adaptation” and what we, with characteristic Sikaman optimism, call “hustle.” Uber Boats are now running on the Kaneshie–Dansoman route during peak flood season. Kwame the carpenter has built a floating workshop from old parliament chairs. The kelewele woman has invested in waterproof packaging. The ECG transformer at the junction sparks like fireworks every time the water rises past its knees — because no Sikaman tragedy is complete without a small light show.
We adapt. We always adapt. We are very, very good at adapting. Which is, in the end, the central tragedy of this country — that our genius for survival has quietly removed the political pressure that would have forced anyone to solve the actual problem.
Da yie, Odaw. Sleep well. We shall see you in June.
Yours in flood and frustration, Kobina Kokote Resident of the Accidental Lagoon · Firstborn of the Gutter Generation · Permanent Secretary of the Society of Buckets Without Holes
P.S. — Honourable Minister, when you next appear in your rolled-up trousers, please bring a real shovel. The borrowed canoe is becoming repetitive, and the small Sikaman child watching from her flooded doorway has memorised your speech.