What renting in a flood-prone area of Accra taught me about readiness, trust, and starting over

The first sign came before I had even paid the rent.

On my way to drop the deposit for a room in Dansoman Otojo, I passed a man a few meters from the compound, crouched at his doorway, scooping water out of his home with a bucket. I stopped. I asked one of the tenants whether the area flooded. He looked at me calmly and said, “There’s nothing at our end. It used to happen in the past, but you’re safe here.”

I believed him. I paid the rent and moved in around June, when the rains had already eased. The first year passed without incident. Then, midway through the second year, water began seeping up through the floor tiles after heavy rain. I told myself it was minor. I planned to move before the next rainy season, timing it with my rent expiry. That plan, reasonable on paper, would cost me everything.

A Promise That Kept Moving
I found a new place in Asoredanho and agreed terms with the landlady, who promised to finish fixing the room before we moved in. I visited several times. Nothing had been done. She kept promising. The rains came anyway.

On the day it happened, I was in Adenta as a banker, pitching a scheme loan to a school — the kind of presentation where you are trying to win an institution’s account and every detail matters. When the rain started mid-session, something shifted in me — a familiar unease I had learned not to ignore. We finished the presentation, I returned to the office, and signed off at exactly 5:00 p.m. By then I was already on the N1 Highway, pushing through a pool of standing water in front of Fiesta Royal, then navigating the stretch through Mallam Junction and Sakaman, where the road had become a river. I got home. My wife had already arrived.

The Night the Water Rose
A few hours later, my wife went to bed with our little girl while I stayed outside with the neighbors, watching the water. The road in front of our gate began to rise. My neighbors assured me it would stop. Then the water climbed above the gate. I ran inside, woke my wife, and carried our daughter upstairs.

Within minutes I returned to our room. The water was at my waist. Before it had entered through the door, the septic tank had already filled and waste was pushing up through the toilet and floor tiles. I waded into the bedroom to save my phone and laptop. Both were already submerged.

Our neighbor upstairs offered us a room for the night. My wife, our daughter, our domestic help, and I stayed there. My wife and daughter slept. I did not. I lay in the dark and thought through everything until morning.

What the Morning Brought
Some boys came the next morning to help us salvage our things. While they appeared to be helping — carrying debris, throwing away damaged items — several of them were stealing. My laptop disappeared. A Samsung tablet. Our daughter’s dresses, both new and old. By the time we realized what was happening, much was already gone.

We brought everything outside: furniture, refrigerator, wardrobes, beds, mattresses. I had just bought a brand-new 55-inch Samsung TV and an LG home theater system, reserved for the new apartment. Both were destroyed. I lost photographs, books, and years of documents. The things you cannot replace.

It was while we were in the middle of all this — dragging waterlogged furniture into the open air, taking stock of what remained — that the news began filtering through. The radio and phones carried reports from across the city: people had died at Circle. Entire households swept away. Communities we knew by name were underwater. What I had lived through in one compound was playing out in dozens of places simultaneously, and for many, the outcome had been far worse. Standing there in the mud, surrounded by the ruins of our home, I felt the full weight of that. We had lost a great deal. But we had not lost what they had lost.

I went back to the landlady in Asoredanho. Now, finally, she agreed to release the two-bedroom apartment. But true to form, more weeks passed before it was livable. We hired a carpenter, a mason, an electrician and a painter to fix what she had not. While work was underway, my wife, daughter, domestic help, and I stayed in a hotel for ten days. We left our daughter and the domestic help there each morning while we went out. Then we came back each evening and did it again.

Eventually, we moved in and started life over again. The TV was repairable. The home theater, partially. We bought new furniture. But the photographs were gone. The documents were gone. We were not. Life, I reminded myself, was the most important thing. We had that. We began again.

The Memory That Would Not Leave
Years later, now living in the Tema enclave, I heard the June 3rd disaster being marked on its 11th anniversary. A radio presenter was discussing it with a guest when the details pulled me back: the water, the night, the smell. But alongside the memories came something else — a genuine gratitude for how far we had come.

That same evening, I called the driver who picks up our children from school. He said he was at Community 9 and would meet us at Kpone Barrier. I took the Free Zones route to avoid traffic. Then the weather changed — and within seconds, that old feeling returned. Not panic. Something quieter and more specific. The body’s own memory of what floods can do.

I called the driver again. Another vehicle had hit his bumper; he had gone back to Community 9 with the other driver and not called me. When I asked why he hadn’t contacted me before turning back — knowing he was carrying children, knowing I had told him where I was — he had no answer. My wife and I spent the next two hours on the phone, tracking them through the rain. They eventually found an alternate route and met us at Community 25 around 9:35 p.m. We were home just before 10.

Nothing happened. But the fear was real. It is always real, once you have lived through it.

What Can Be Done
The flooding in parts of Accra is not new, and the solutions are not complicated to name: proper drainage, enforcement of building codes, investment in early-warning systems. The challenge, as ever, is the gap between knowing and doing. City authorities and the government have a responsibility here that cannot be outsourced to individual residents who are simply trying to keep their children dry.

But while we wait for those long-term solutions, there are things you can control. Know your alternative routes before the rain comes, not during. Move to higher ground early — early enough to feel foolish for leaving, which is precisely the right time. And if you are searching for a place to rent, this month — before the rainy season fully sets in — is the best time to look. Visit more than once. Ask multiple neighbors, not just one. Look for the signs yourself: the watermarks on walls, the stained tiles, the man at the next compound scooping water out with a bucket.

I saw that man. I asked the question. I accepted the first reassuring answer I received and moved on.

Don’t wait for the water to reach your waist before you move.

Author: Felix Ekow Eshun
Founder, Lixfel
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