The owners of about 24 homesteads at Muthatari on the outskirts of Embu Town have appealed to the National and County Governments to help them drain flood water that has made their homes uninhabitable.
The homeowners and their tenants all totaling to about 100 people have been forced to abandon their homes with those remaining having to live in unhygienic conditions as the flood water has now mixed with sewage from cracked sewer pipes.
Jane Kivuti, who the media found with buckets trying to fetch water out of her living room, said the tedious work has become a ritual she has to carry out every morning and every evening since the water keeps seeping through the walls and accumulating in her sitting room.
“We are walking around in gumboots even inside the house,” she said.
Another neighbour, Joseph Ndereva, said they have had to dispose of their livestock like chicken while their crops, including permanent ones like bananas, have turned yellow because of being submerged in water for a long period of time.
The flooding has also affected school going children who now have to use a long route to access the nearby Gatondo Primary School.
Rachel Mate said her entire family has been infected with flu for living in a humid house. She said they dare not open windows to aerate their house because the outside air stinks because it has mixed with sewage.
“We get stressed every time the clouds gather. Sometimes I can’t sleep in the night thinking we might wake up to find ourselves in water,” she added.
They asked the County Disaster Management Committee to consider helping in opening a channel that will drain the water to the wetland near the St Francis Catholic Church and another one from that marsh to a second one that drains into River Itabwa.
They said they last got into a similar problem in 2020 but it was at a much smaller scale.
“We used solar pumps to pump out the water. It was expensive but we made it manageable,” Kivuti said.
Ndereva said they have consulted an expert who has recommended a piped channel to the first marsh and an open furrow to the second wetland and the river.
He said they now want the county government to assist them with mapping and pipe work to deal with the problem for once and for all.
By Steve Gatheru
