Preparing for Rain

Accra’s rainy season is accompanied by flooding every year, and residents, especially those living by the waterways, anticipate flooding events with significant anxiety. In the news and in daily conversation warnings are abound, and people share memories of flooding events from the past. Residents often seek to prevent disasters by taking infrastructural matters into their own hands. They construct flood barriers, using sandbags, cement, concrete and rubble left over after construction. In this article I discuss these infrastructural manifestations of anxiety in Accra’s waterways.