May 12, 2025
We always know when the rainy season truly begins in Wakiso. It’s not just the sound of water hammering on corrugated iron roofs; it’s the smell of rising damp mixed with fear.
Last night, the heavens opened over Kampala. While the richer suburbs dealt with inconvenient puddles, down here in the valley of the slum, the water had nowhere to go but into people’s homes.
At 3:45 AM, our community phone line began ringing. By 4:30 AM, our emergency response team was wading through knee-deep water in Zone C.
We arrived to find devastation. The relentless pressure of the water had dissolved the mud-brick foundations of three separate structures. In an instant, three homes collapsed into rubble and mud.
The Night the Walls Fell
Miraculously, no lives were lost. The families, hearing the groaning of the walls, managed to grab their sleeping children and escape seconds before the roofs caved in.
But they lost everything else.
Eighteen people—including seven children under the age of ten and two elderly grandmothers—are standing in the rain this morning with nothing but the soaking wet clothes on their backs. Their bedding, their cooking pots, their school books, and their meager savings are buried under feet of wet mud.
This is the brutal reality of poverty housing. You spend years building a life, and one night of heavy rain washes it away.
One mother, shivering under a plastic sheet we provided, told us: “When the sky turns black over Wakiso, we don’t sleep. We sit up and hold our children. We listen to the water rising, praying the walls will hold one more night. Last night, our prayers ran out.”
Fecane as First Responders
In 2020, we would have been scrambling. In 2025, we were ready.
Because of the infrastructure we have built over the last five years, Fecane is now the de facto firstresponder for Wakiso. Before the sun was fully up, our team had mobilized:
- Triage and Safety: We moved the 18 displaced individuals to the safety of our current Fecane office hall (proving yet again why permanent space is vital).
- Immediate Warmth: We accessed our strategic emergency stock to provide dry blankets, towels, and hot tea to treat immediate shock and hypothermia.
- Damage Assessment: Our team is currently actively helping salvage what can be saved from the wreckage before the next rains come.
The Danger Isn’t Over. We Need Help.
This rain is not stopping. The ground is completely saturated. Our engineers have identified at least ten other nearby homes that are at imminent risk of collapse if it rains hard again tonight.
We have depleted our emergency cash reserves to buy immediate food and dry clothing for these 18 people. We need to replenish our ability to respond today.
We are not asking for long-term building funds right now. We are asking for immediate disaster relief cash. We need to purchase heavy-duty tarpaulins for temporary roofing, rent temporary safe rooms for these families for the next month, and provide basic household restart kits.
The water is rising. We need you to stand with us.
This is an active emergency. These 18 people have nowhere to sleep tonight.
Please do not wait. Your donation right now buys a dry blanket, a hot meal, and temporary shelter for a family that has lost everything. Donate Immediately to the Emergency Flood Response Fund
