#NoSugerAdded: Umdloti’s heartache deepens
Six weeks after the January 13 flood, Umdloti's south beach car park is still a mess and community morale is low.
Has the slow poison of living in a disaster zone for nearly two years suffocated the fire in Umdloti’s belly?
Six weeks after the January 13 flood, Umdloti’s south beach car park is still a mess and community morale is low.
Truckloads of sand and building rubble from flood repair work being done at an unfortunate private property across the road that has been slammed by flood waters for the sixth time since April 2022, are being dumped in the public car park.
The southern half is inaccessible and just plain dreadful.
Although repair work started right after the flood, at the time of writing no sand had been carted away yet and the dump load kept growing.
The area in question is where the community would normally gather before and after work to offload and share stories.
It serves an essential purpose in fostering the strong community bonds that makes Umdloti what it is – like the old town water well in Biblical times.
With this key component of the local morning and late afternoon ritual sidelined and information on when this will be fixed about as accessible as the fabled pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, people are feeling miserable.
Understandably, the stiff municipal rates, for some apparently as high as R8 000 per month, is a bitter pill to swallow.
Even children are affected. The other day my landlord’s three-year-old daughter asked why she could no longer see the sea when driving home in the car.
In four weeks’ time it’s Easter and what I find rather disturbing is that with the frequent power outages on Bellamont and North Beach roads, intermittent water issues and the ongoing sewer problems on South Beach Road, everyone just seems to accept that it is what it is and it appears like nothing is being done.
Even Umdloti’s once fierce Wagner keyboard army appears to have run out of steam.
Has the trauma suffered over the last two years (at the back of the Covid nightmare) by what seems to be the unluckiest town in the country become so extensive that people have no fight left in them?
My parting shot to Umdloti is the immortal lyrics from the Pink Floyd “treffer” Comfortably Numb: “Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?”
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