Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. One thing we want to be mindful of as we make our way through this season about protest and the criminalization of it and all of the conversations swirling around both of those things, is that one of the reasons that so many people and companies and think tanks and other organizations have worked really hard to generate so much conversation about protest tactics and who's radical and who isn't is to distract from
what's actually going on when it comes to climate change. Today, we're bringing you an episode from our sister podcast, Inherited, that digs into what is actually happening on the ground in a place that's being deeply impacted by climate change and also happens to be the largest oil producer on
the continent of Africa, Nigeria. This episode is called Loss Is on the Calendar, and in it, storyteller mo Isu traces the repetitive cycle of loss and rebuilding in the rural Niger Delta region of Nigeria as the country weather's extreme seasonal flooding. After meeting a flood survivor in his hometown of Lagos, mo travels twelve hours to Lokoja, the town where Nigeria's largest rivers converge, to explore how directly impacted flood survivors endure the region's relentless cycle of damage
and repair. We'll have an episode coming in the next few months about what climate protest looks like in Nigeria and the history of climate protest there over the past few decades. Especially as we head into an international climate summit where conversations are very much swirling around whether fossil fuel development is the answer to all of Africa's problems
or not. It's important to remember that yes, energy poverty is a problem, and also that the continent of Africa is likely to experience some of the worst impacts of climate change, and that poor people there will be impacted hardest. A solution that ignores either of those things is no solution will that enjoy this story from mo U in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, there are two seasons, dry and wet, but due to the effects of anthropogenic climate change, many people of the Niger Delta region spend their summers displaced the rivers that provide for them throughout the year flooding at alarming rates Hafiday and welcome to Inherited. We share the work of young audio storytellers hoping to uplift a new generation of climate advocacy. I'm your season host Shalen Martos and this is Season three, Episode three. Loss is on
the calendar. Flooding in the Middle Belt in south of Nigeria has become the norm. The banks of the rivers Niger and Benway overrun each year, destroying homes and taking the lives of people whose livelihoods depend on their access to water. Mo Esu remembers the first major floods in twenty twelve and sees how the climate crisis directly affects the people along the rivers in Nigeria today. He shares the voices of people whose communities struggle to adapt to
the destruction of each rainy season. Here's mo Esu with loss Is on the calendar.
Here are two reasons why June is not like any of that month. One, it marks the halfway point of the year. Two, perhaps more significantly, because of the rain. In the tropical climate of Nigeria, where there are two seasons, the dry and the wet, June kicks off the height of the wet season. If you get caught out in the rain without an umbrella in the middle of June, you cannot blame the weather forecast, only yourself.
Personally. I like the rain.
I like watching the drop spatter against my windows. I like the cold raize it brings, replacing the humidity. I like the certainty of it. Usually we know when the rains are coming and we know how to prepare for them.
Usually.
In twenty twelve, it felt like no one was prepared for the rainy season that was fifteen years old at the time. Living with my family in the art of Legos, I remember this one week in July when the rains came and did not stop. It rained on Monday, and on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and was still raining when the next Monday came around. All the while I watched from the safety of my house on the third floor
of a three story block of flats. I watched the pounding rain, the bloodstream winds, and the cushion stream of water flowed down the streets. I was oblivious to the change that this particular raining season was going to bring.
It is a critical situation for a number east and west. The floods of taking over the entire human habitations and the people are left helpless as their homes and farmlands are completely washed away.
In twenty twelve, Nigeria saw its worst flooding in forty years. The fifteen year old version of me that watched the rain from his window learned from the news what others lived through. The rain this year was more than they had baggained form. By the time June had come and gone, disaster struck. Still, there was worse yet.
To come, and as floods continue as the ravaged parts of the country, even areas earlier believe to be safer being overrun.
In Delta State, forty three communities in.
The Socer South.
Communities in the Middle Belt and South of Nigeria were the worst hit. The rivers of around their banks and poor Dunnett gave one off from the downpour, nowhere to go, and so the water found home in the places where people live. All houses disappeared, leaving only the top of their rules.
The situation is not better. It could get stayed.
Yet people aren't able to leave their homes and those who had gone outside the state before the wicked floods are now stranded.
The floods ravaged communities in venue Niger, Fugi, Edu and Kano States, many lucky enough to be alive, and our refugees in their own country.
The flooding has also hit Adamawa and Taraba, Kano, Bauchi, Jagawa and Kaduna as well. The official death toll is around one hundred and forty so far, but AID agencies fear that will rise as disease takes hold.
By the end of the year, three hundred and sixty three people had died. Seven million people in the the two of Nigeria stats six states had been affected. Two point one million of them were displaced from their homes.
As our learned about flooding news, that's really not something that we never as zoo will be something that another flood would be something that would happen to me personally.
In twenty twelve, Victor Annual was eighteen. His family moved to Locoja two years earlier. Lokoja is a river, rhine and fishing community, the capital of Good Distate and the town where then Injurias, two largest rivers converge. When the flooding started, Victor's father raised the first alarm. Victor was at the time in university in a different part of the States.
When the rains came.
It's father called him, but he met the call with more skepticism that concern.
I really didn't think that's serious. My father had left y dramatic. So when is that floor that was like this, that's coming again? So then I went and travel said I should come home immediately.
And so Victor did just that. He left his friends in school and got on a bus to local jar where he expected to find his father. Overreacting to a little extra water on the bus ride. It's slowly dawned on the Victor that his father might not be exaggerating. The road that led home run parallel to the River Ninja. What was usually a calm, a quiet presence, was suddenly not. The water had reason to ice. They did not imagine it could reach where trees could be seen before. Now
there was only the wisper of them. Hounds were half submerged underwater. Roads disappeared. The people on the bus with him started to cry.
They had never seen the river like this before.
The source of their livelihold was coming for their lives. When Victor got them, he joined his father in preparation for the worst. The flood was growing closer.
Camus in the street next to mine like this used to be padd All of a sudden, the mode of trussortation changed from two kings.
The two of them, father and son did this sort of recognission. They sit in the neighboring streets to see how much of a danger there was. In Victor's mind, it did not seem like much. Yes, there was a flood. The river had breached his banks and was flowing deep into the streets closest to it. But Victor's family did not live on one of those streets. From their house, they could not see the water, and into his eyes the water was still coming slowly in rapos, gaining ground
ever so slightly. The flood was still out of sight when the twelve of them went to bed that night and.
The next morning, just fift away from my house.
I mean, like when you woke up this morning and you.
You know, like my father had gone to call it frock, just.
Packing immediately everything by the time were partly by the time we're packing fine, moving to find this where this is stepping into the water, like.
Until the water by town when we're going to the last of the house.
When when you guys stepped back in that day, did you know that you never did you go back to us?
Whatever? Did you guys realied that you're packing away from you?
We thought this will come back.
It was two weeks before Victor and his father would return to their home in their boats to find only the roof. Escorted with family for a few days, and soon moved to a different house in a different part of town, leaving all their neighbors without ever saying goodbye.
Wheveryone was trying to move actually, so it was just like, we're too traumatized to have any sort of emotional goodbyes. You understanding you're moving from your house, and look across you see your best friend's family also trying to move.
She's like at that point or surviver.
Victor's family was born of the lucky ones. They could afford to move and find last and safety. Some other families did not have the same privilege like Victor. They left their homes when the flood came, but instead of finding homes, they were moved to displacement camps, where they stayed for the month. It took the water to receeved, and they have been doing this year after year since their first incident, because you you've spoken about it then, just like now, they like a part of.
Life that the yeah, just ant happen every day.
In twenty twelve, oblivious to fifteen year old More watching from his window, oblivious to Victor and his family to the old country, something was changing in Nigeria, where the rain comes in May and lives in October. Flooding a certain part of the country became a yearly occurrence. When it came, it took things, people's homes, livelihoods and security. Sometimes it took the people to what was meant to
be one of disasters became a part of life. And in a place like this, where the people depend on the river, they don't have the privilege of living. The only option is to adapt. So my question now is this, what does it mean to adapt to loss? To answer this question, I took a trip to Local Jab, where Victor and his family once lived. It's May twenty twenty three and the rainy season has slowly begun to announce itself. It rained the money and I arrived in Local Jab.
According to the people I spoke, so it's been raining for the past three days. The rain is late this year, but over the next couple of months it will get heavier. Soon enough, the floods will written. The people who live in here know this. Pet me your net first.
My name is Ahmed Omad.
I am an indigen of this.
Community and the YouTube that this community called the book the community in Ancord on the.
Local local governmental distance the short FLORDILM. It's a yearly chorus. Yelly, it's a comic.
Sit What have you promoted?
That's the voice of Ahmed Omar, a community leader in local j He's asking the question on everybody's band, can we prevent this? Within this question lies others like why is this happening now?
And why has the.
Flooding become such a persistent problem. The short answer is that we are seeing I have volumes of rainfall across the board in Angeria. The general consensus is that climate change is the course of this increased rainfall. This increase is most notable in the Knot, where rainfall was up by more than one hundred and fifty percent last year.
Increased rainfall is bad enough by itself. Certain urban areas like Legos, the most popular city in Anigeria, have the only other gredients necessary for a flooding disaster, poor drainage and waste management systems.
Legos are Land, densely populated, is one of such areas bearing the branch of the rainfall, with streets around the Dumago, Jiankara, Ujogua, among others, retaining the water for months.
Then there are the communities in the south where the River Ninja empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah, I have rain for midst rise and sea levels along the coast. The resulting flood is disastrous, putting entire communities at risk of extinction. Finally, we have the East, North and central part of Nigeria. The longest rivers in the country are situated Yere. The River Nanja flows in from the northwest and the river Anyway from the northeast.
The country experiences seasonal flooding along these two main rivers every year, but on a far smaller scale.
It's a different story this time. Both rivers Midia in Lokoja consisted.
Of the river.
That's on half of the fence. I go to our house that were most collapse.
During my visits to local job I walked through at Anklo where it is not immediately obvious that most of these buildings were completely underwater less than a year ago. They are a few telt his signs that gave it away. The robot remains of collapsed houses is one. Water marks on the houses that survived is another.
This this is your house, your brother.
I met up with Abbas, a farmer and fisherman who has lived here in a bancolo for as long as you can remember. Because his livelihood is so attached to the river, he has beauty. The house about two hundred meters away from it. We are looking over the river when I sit down with him under his shed to talk about his experience over the past ten years and now it has changed his relationship with the place it calls home. We're speaking Pidgeon English and Thenderian career O version of English.
Don't talk coming again, really now, don't get the rest of mine now.
Mine even this one.
Not even talking about this morning. They were wolves dying. Don't talk this God.
Know what you got.
Their person now?
I said this one.
We're not even talk to you this morning like this.
That God from where it sits the stones show away from the river, shows me the part of the water when it starts to overflow its bank. It starts by mapping out the area closest to the river. He points at the barring place of land where it says the church used to stand. All that's left now is the old tim start for that place.
Before even that the atte this meant so the money pass they stand and then that's.
There are many stories like this of ghost houses built before the flooding problem. Before where we've been sitting for our interview shows me the outline of what used to be a three bedroom house. It's unrecognizable to me as such until it points out on the ground what used to be the foundation blocks.
Now you mightn't be diagnourished to.
Almost Then we crossed into the places where houses still stand, including his own, although a few rooms are under construction following their collapse last year.
Guides made through another one hundred meters of affected houses. In reality, every single house and this area was affected by last year's flood, including Latifers Latifer to Mosa, whose house is at least five hundred meters away from the river. According to Latifer, last year's flooding is the worst he has ever experienced, worse than the flooding of twenty twelve. When the twenty twelve flood came, l if I left at home out of fear, but the water did not
actually enter the house. Last year, the flood not only displaced their family but kept them away for three weeks.
And now my house, so impersoned me the water person on broad week and no house and they look, they look my house and not viewish. I go go se down for where I go, I go find another house. Now let one rule. I pushed myself and they pushed my load. Today, all my my husband and my people. They go fine.
When the flood comes, it doesn't only drive families out of their homes, it also divides them. In Latin first case, all eleven members of our family found little places to squat all around the town. Meanwhile, Abubacle's wife and children were out in their primary school that costs placed as a displacement camp during during the season, while a bubaqu resort at temporary home elsewhere. No one really talks about
this part of flooding, how it breaks up families. Every year, come October, the news reports statistics the number of people are affected, acres of land destroyed, and millions of dollars in property lost. And behind these statistics are the lives of people like Latifa Musa, people who are unable to get a full night's rest out of fear that the water will come for them while they sleep.
If you don't, they got nobody. If you sleep, go back, you sleep smart, we go away. You gonna look at maybe this year the month so that nobody.
If you wear your sleep go back.
People like go back, who are in a perpetual state of the building with similar beauty.
Of who don't have any.
People like the many by to encountered in the displacement camp last year when you visited people for whom losing their home has become a yearly experience.
So now they have so many interesting they have clicks. They have clicks.
Yes in the town like it's like and this clicks, houseful food together, when they shave the look out for their own interests. And then when you talk to them you realize that these people meet this camp.
Like four years ago back.
So these people are now for many new communities in their temporary homes, bonded by their shared experience of loss. This is what it means when displacement becomes part of the calendar. It changes your life, not just once, but over and over again. It's been ten years since Nigeria started facing regular flooding. Places like Cookies still don't have any real infrastructure in place to mitigate the flooding or to cater for the affected people in the community I visited.
Every year, a few classrooms of a school are converted into alls to house they displaced. Hundreds of people, mostly women and children, pack themselves into these classrooms and they wait.
They are waiting for help.
When they help comes from the government, who comes in the form of donated food, food that these people would then have to fight over a Barbacrid does and stay in the camp with his family because he can't stand that kind of shame.
Two up of rice? What do you Why would you account what he wants? We won't expect they eat too four to carry the fight on top of me.
You can't stand the idea of not being able to provide for his family and being reduced to fighting for some cops of rice. This is not the oppy ones, and if I've been honest, this is not the oppen needs. I met Omar, a community leader in local jam told me of an angel that just a couple of months before we spoke, went around donating building materials to people in this community.
Yes, I they can to work, Saint Clement, they would want that you were happy for They give us zinc.
Telepond of zinc, give us fifteen part of cement.
They gave us over fifty blog of block.
You give up the.
That's what probably do to them. You just do your estimate.
Was one of the beneficiaries of this act of kindness. When I met him, he had already used some of these materials in good in.
His own givement. Give blog band good bye role your bed the guy revery.
So I thought, maybe this is the up needs. Then he confessed to me that if given the chance, he would move. After living here for so long, after starting a family year, was ready to say goodbye to his own. He was ready to live somewhere he could have peace of mind. So maybe this is it. Maybe they help these people need is with relocating. I brought his hypothesis
up with Ahmed and he reacted with this story. Back in twenty twelve, when the floods first came, the Nigeria government at the time had moved to relocate the affected people. An estate was built and houses were allocated to the victims. It was one of those rare moments when the government seemed to actually take action. But the people that benefited from this that we awarded these houses and pieces of land.
The sued the land majority so their land a majority put it to come back to the two.
Are in case shemist that Ahmed is telling me that many of the people who benefited from this game so roted out their houses and moved right back to their homes by the river, bringing us back to where we started waiting for elasting solution. Much has changed since twenty twelve when I watched the rain obliviously from my window. With every veiny season that watches by, more and more Nanjia has become vulnerable to the devastating effects of Sisna flooding.
There is attension in the air every time it rains. We will do what I come forwards now or will we get on a diem. It's June, as I put the final this is of this story to get up. It's on a season.
And we are waitten.
Hi folks, it's Shalin again. Thank you so much for listening to Loss is on the calendar by mo issue. That's all for this episode of Inherited. We'll return next week with an all new episode featuring another fantastic young climate storyteller, and keep a look out this Friday for some BTS craft talk with mo on his process, inspiration, and goals for the future. Sign him Assi for joining us for episode three. There is so much more in store for season three of Inherited, so make sure to
tune in each Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. Inherited is brought to you by yr Media, a national network of young journalists and artists creating content for this generation. We're distributed by Critical Frequency, a woman run podcast network founded by journalists. The story loss is on the Calendar featured in today's episode was written, produced, voiced, and sound designed by mo Isu, an Inherited season three storyteller special
thanks to Fuad Lal and Jill Echeniku. I'm Shala Martos, your season three host and producer. The co creators and senior producers of Inherited are Georgia Wright and Jules Bradley. Our audio engineer is James Riley, and our audio engineering fellow is Christian Romo. Dominique French and Knight Turner provided products support and our intern is Esther Omelola. Our executive producer is Amy Westervelt from Critical Frequency. Why r's director of Podcasting is Sam Chu and our Senior director of
Podcasting and Partnerships is Rebecca Martin. Original music for this episode created by these young musicians at Wyre Media, Christian Romo, Andres Kanudstad, Noah Holt, Jacob ar Mente, Chas Whitley, Michael Diaz, Sean Luciana Galarza and jay Mahee Akwenza. Music direction by Oliver Quia Rodriguez and Maya Drexler. Other music licensed from APM.
Music.
Art for this episode created by y r's Marjorie Massacat Art direction by Brigado Bautista. Michelle Rivera is our web designer. Project management from Eli Arbiton. Wyre's creative director is Pedro Vega Junior. Special thanks to Maggie Taylor, Jasmine Burton, Chavon Graham, Donielle Conley and Kyra Kyles. Please throw us a rating or maybe even a review on the Apple podcast app that goes a long way towards getting these stories out there.
You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Inherited Pod If you want to learn more about our show and this season's cohort of storytellers, head to our website at why Are dot Media slash Inherited? Sign them AUSI for listening, and see you next Wednesday.
Inherited is a critically acclaimed climate storytelling show made by, for and about young people. It's a production of Why Are Media and distributed by Critical Frequency. For more information about Inherited, head to their website at whyre dot Media slash Inherited and follow them on socials at Inherited Pod. We'll be back next week with another episode in our series on the real free speech threat. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.
One