Mourning Rains

Have you noticed? Every time it pours now, the floods don't just come—they attack.
The hills of Bamenda used to hold the rain so gently, like a loving embrace.
But today, the rain comes down so hard that the ground gives way,
and we're left watching our own land wash away.

Fo Mile 2 Nkwen, Fo city chemist the bridge didn't just break
it surrendered.
Souls, swept off the face of a pedestrian plank,
carried downstream like forgotten prayers.
And we stood on the banks,
watching our neighbors become memories,
watching our future wash away in muddy brown currents.

But do not just mourn—listen.
Listen to the chainsaws screaming in the distance.
Listen to the hills groaning under the weight of our greed.
We stripped the highlands bare
cedar, iroko, the ancient guardians of the slopes—
all turned to charcoal, all turned to timber,
all turned to nothing.
And when the rains came
the soil had no hands to hold onto.
It let go.
It let us go.

Look at our gutters—choked with plastic, choked with pride.
We built our houses on the beds of streams,
saying, “Water no go eva reach fo here.”
But water no di ever foget.
E di follow na road fo e papa,
and we built our homes right in the middle of its ancestry.
In Limbe, the mountain slid into the sea,
taking a mother and her unborn child.
In Douala, a five-year-old drowned in a puddle of our negligence.
In Mbouda, the observatory warned us
but we covered our ears with the noise of our daily bread.

So what must we do, my people?
We get fo stop fo di pray say make rain stop
and start fo di pray fo we fo change.

We need fo plant tree back fo side wey tree be dey
Let the roots hold the earth like a fist holds a promise.
Unblock the drainage—Water no be wa enemy;
Na wa teacher.
It teaches us that we cannot pave paradise
and expect it to still breathe.

Make council helep we map the rivers
before the rivers map our graves.
Let us build not just for today's beauty,
but for tomorrow's survival.
Let us listen to the old women who know the land,
who say, “Do not build where the frogs gather,
for they know the flood before it is born.”

Bamenda highlands—you are not just hills of coffee and corn.
You are the spine of our resilience.
We cannot afford to break your back.

So let us rise—not in anger, but in action.
Let the children we save tomorrow
be the poets who sing of the day
we chose the forest over the fortune,
the drainage over the denial,
the future over the flood.

For the earth does not hate us
it is responding to us.
And if we change our hands,
the hills will change their song.

Let the highlands live.
Let the waters pass—not destroy.
Let us be the bridge that doesn't break.

Bamenda… let us begin.

#MourningRains #CameroonFloods #Bamenda #Limbe #Douala #ClimateCrisis #SpokenWord #ActNow #SaveTheHighlands