Flood­wa­ter has re­ced­ed in some ar­eas of Bam­boo No 2, Val­sayn. How­ev­er, some homes in the vil­lage are still un­der­wa­ter.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that some homes were still see­ing wa­ter lev­els up to five feet in their homes on Thurs­day.

Vil­lagers said Tem­ple Street, which is clos­er to the pumps in Bam­boo No 2, was still se­vere­ly af­fect­ed.

As the wa­ter lev­el dropped in some homes, how­ev­er, vil­lagers were able to fi­nal­ly en­ter their them af­ter four days. Some of the res­i­dents had been sleep­ing with rel­a­tives and in cars wait­ing for the wa­ter to go down af­ter flood­wa­ter rose over the week­end.

Dou­bles ven­dor Rocky Sookdeo said he had lost every­thing in the floods.

Sookdeo lives with his chil­dren and they have lost every sin­gle ap­pli­ance in their home. Now, he said their chal­lenge is clean­ing and bring­ing back some sem­blance of nor­mal­i­ty.

Sookdeo said he was con­cerned that his life sav­ings were washed away in the wa­ters.

“I had some mon­ey saved in a pan un­known to my chil­dren and every day when I sell my dou­bles I put $100 in the pan and I did that for three years. I don’t know if some­body got the pan. We are still look­ing and we are hop­ing to find it.”

He added, “I asked my chil­dren not to open the gates due to fear that my life sav­ings would wash away.”

Sookdeo has slept in his ham­mock in the Bam­boo No 2 Recre­ation Ground since Sun­day. He is ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment or any­one in au­thor­i­ty to come to the vil­lagers’ as­sis­tance.

The loss­es were al­so great for busi­ness, as car parts and cars were seen float­ing in the wa­ters for days, and many are still reel­ing and count­ing their loss­es, which is said to be in the mil­lions.

Busi­ness­man and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist In­shan Ish­mael said his loss­es were in the thou­sands.

“For busi­ness­es that were im­pact­ed and peo­ple like my­self, and I can on­ly speak for my­self, I was brought up with a hard shell, so this is some­thing that is a hur­dle in my life. Get over it and move on be­cause at the end of the day, we might be study­ing that we got a small cut on your fin­ger and it has per­sons who don’t have an arm and that is how I look at life be­cause the as­sis­tance that we have been get­ting from peo­ple and the calls, it is amaz­ing. So, at the end of the day, clean-up has start­ed but this is just one hur­dle and I am wait­ing for the next one to come,” he said.

Ear­li­er this week, Ish­mael and vil­lagers con­front­ed Min­is­ters of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan and Min­ster of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Faris Al-Rawi when they toured the com­mu­ni­ty.

Since the con­fronta­tion, Ish­mael and the vil­lagers have hired an at­tor­ney to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion against the Gov­ern­ment.

“In re­gards to the bank in Bam­boo Vil­lage No 2, we have con­tact­ed a sur­vey­ing com­pa­ny to do a topog­ra­phy of the Ca­roni Riv­er bank. The last one was done in 2014 so that will there­fore tell us the highs and lows of the bank. In oth­er words, we are do­ing the job of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, but be­cause of this, it will add to our le­gal ac­tion. But what is hap­pen­ing is that we have been con­tact­ed by oth­er at­tor­neys as well, we have been con­tact­ed by Om Lal­la, Lar­ry Lal­la, so it is go­ing to be a bat­tery of at­tor­neys com­ing to­geth­er to deal with this,” he said.

—Re­port­ing by Ot­to Car­ring­ton