- Adopt Unusual Lifestyles, Experts Offer Tips
BY AWELE OGBOGU
When Majek Fashek released his hit album ‘Send down the Rain’ in the 90s, he could not have envisaged the intensity of heat currently suffered by Nigerians.
This harmattan, the weather condition has been unusually hot. Suddenly the harmattan set in for some days, but has brought severe heat. The extraordinary rising temperature levels are now making people edgy.
Just before midday each day, for instance, the sun is already up, beating down savagely and forcing mean daily temperature in some places climbing above 40 degrees centigrade. This condition is driving many literally crazy, leaving anyone in sight perspiring profusely, with rivulets of sweat cascading down even one is out of the sun.
No one is spared of this severe impact of the stressful weather. At night time, things don’t get better but worse. Many without power supply or air conditioners hardly sleep. Some are forced to sleep outdoors till late in the night so as to stay cool. Everyone is wondering what is going on.
It has bred frustration and anger. It was noticed that many mothers now bathe their children several times a day due to the heat. Rashes among children is a direct consequence of the heat wave sweeping across most parts of the country today. It has left many battling sleepless nights and days of restlessness. It has been weeks of frustration and discomfort for all.
Mrs. Tohan Olokor said “my daughter has hardly slept well over the last three weeks.” Days of keeping close watch over her little baby appeared to had taken a toll on her. “Since the heat became intense, there is no night that my husband and I don’t wake at least three times to use water and towel to dab her body”. “She would cry intensely and refuse to sleep even when I tried to feed her with breast milk. Her entire body is now covered with heat rashes which makes her feel uncomfortable most of the time especially when it starts to itch her. As a result of this problem, I only wear her pants when we are at home because putting clothes on her would compound the problem. I am really worried, I wish there was something I could do to help her as seeing her in pains breaks my heart.”
Many parents said they had to cut short their sleep at night these days to help their little children find some comfort. Apart from using towel and pieces of clothes dipped in water to dab their bodies, many wake several times during the night to pour water on their children’s bodies to enable them find some sleep. For many, it has been a very testing period.
Mrs. Mercy John, a 32-year-old cleaner, was one parent who felt the fangs of a new responsibility due to the prevailing weather condition. Working several hours a day, John said she hardly gets enough rest these days, waking to bathe and attend to her children many times during the night. “My one-and-half-year-old daughter has been purging for several days now as a result of the heat”, she diagnosed. “I had to stay awake several times every night to bathe her and her brothers so they can sleep. It’s a lot of task for me considering the number of hours I spend at work. Most times when I get to work, I feel very weak and sleepy because of the stress I am passing through. The heat is really causing us problems, it is affecting our lives in a very serious way.”
Other families have adopted several tactics to survive. For instance, a child was seen outside covered with dusting powder. His mother, Mrs. Goodness Udo said that “we now invest in dustin powder, hand fans and even drugs for the children who constantly develop all sorts of health conditions, especially stomach ache”, saying it as a result of the heat.
Udo said apart from not wiping their bodies after bathing, her family no longer eat hot meals these days as doing that, she believes, would compound their situation. “We don’t eat hot foods any longer in the house just to avoid feeling hot inside our bodies”, she said. “Even when we bathe, we don’t wipe our bodies, we allow the water to dry on our skin. This is one of the ways the entire family is coping with the hot weather in the country.
Udo a tailour said “even customers who bring clothes for me to make for them instruct that they do not want thick linings, while some even ask me not to put linings at all because of the heat.
Mrs. Lilian Nkwocha said “it has been a very terrible season for us as a family because there is no power supply and petrol for the generator is not easy to come by. If you get inside our flat, you’ll find nothing less than eight hand fans. The heat has really been dealing with us mercilessly”, she said. “This is the second dustin powder I am buying for my children in less than one month”, Mrs. Okolie Pauline, a mother of three said while pointing to a corner of her tiny shop earlier in the week when one of our correspondents came across her. “It is always inside my bag because even during the daytime when I am at the shop, I rub it on my baby and myself. The heat has destroyed their skins. I cannot remember how many times we bathe in a day just to escape the heat. I have never seen this type of weather before in my life”, she said, before reaching for a plastic hand fan with which she blew her son, one-year-old Sammy.
Besides spending substantial amounts of money on the purchase of items, such as dustin powder, hand fans, many adults and families now boast of rechargeable fans, mosquito nets and even mats to sleep in the open. In fact some people, as part of ways to sleep peacefully at night, now leave their doors open till morning.
“I have been sleeping with my door open over the last two weeks”, Vincent Adoge, a bachelor told one of our correspondents. “All I do is close the net and stay near the entrance so that breeze can touch me. But this does not mean that I do not pour water on my body at least two times before morning. “The heat has got to a level where many people would in fact start sleeping without putting anything on. When I go outside, I am ashamed to expose my body because of the heat rashes all over me. I have at least two hand fans in my room and I bought dustin powder recently just to combat the heat. It is a very serious problem”, he said.
Mr. Bakare Genti, 59, said he has ditched shirts and trousers in favour of tying towels and wearing shorts around his house and neighbourhood these days as a result of the hot weather. He could not hide his frustration while speaking with one of our correspondents recently, revealing that he has also stopped rubbing cream on his body because of the prevailing heat. “I don’t rub cream on my body anymore because of the heat”, he said. “Except I have somewhere important to go, all you’ll catch me with is just a towel around my waist or sometimes a pair of shorts for air to touch my body very well. “The weather has been very hot and now that there is hardly power supply or fuel to run the generator, the suffering has really increased. Even as an adult, I am really feeling the pain”, he said.
Rechargeable and hand fans have come to the rescue. While the heat wave has left many households grumbling and lamenting bitterly, it interestingly has seen to the emergence of new products and businesses. For example, aside hand fans and dustin powder, mats and treated mosquito nets have become huge favourites across many homes today, leaving traders in the items smiling to the bank.
This is aside rechargeable fans of all kinds now flooding the market. The fans with different features such as water cooling, start from as low as N2, 000 to as high as N40, 000. It is one of the hottest selling items in many markets across Nigeria today. “I had to plead with my husband to buy a rechargeable fan at N18, 000 when the heat became unbearable”, Kelechi Anubo, a resident told one of our correspondents. “Since we bought the fan, it has really helped a lot at least the children can sleep peacefully. But it has been quite tough recharging it as a result of the electricity and petrol situation. Otherwise, it has been very useful”, she said.
Mr. Kingsley Aniekwe, a trader said he sold more than 20 pieces of different brands of rechargeable fans over the last three weeks. According to him, there has been more demand for the item and other rechargeable products like torchlights in recent times.
“There is hardly a day that customers don’t walk into my shop asking for rechargeable fans. In the last three weeks, I have sold more than 20 rechargeable fans. I stock more of the product nowadays because it is selling very fast”, he said.
But Aniekwe was not the only one making cool cash from the demand of certain items as a result of the prevailing heat situation across the country. For example, others have been making money selling hand fans and powders used to combat heat rash. Also, individuals and firms building and installing inverters and solar panels in homes and offices are not also left out of the windfall created by the latest heat wave sweeping across the country. Many in the business have seen their bank accounts swell considerably in recent weeks as a result of the growing demand for the technology.
Even though, quite expensive, those who can afford it have continued to embrace inverters and solar panels. For them it is the little price they have to pay to escape the venom of the hot weather condition.
Experts have been explaining why this is happening. At the same time, medical practitioners have warned that this new weather condition can be potentially harmful and might be deadly for some people. Accordingly, they proffered solutions to help the citizenry stay safe. It is like a new set of commandment which everyone has to obey to stay alive. Dr. Isaac Odii based in Asaba said “you must drink plenty of water every day and eat lots of fruits. You must bathe frequently to keep the body temperature within normal levels. You must as much as possible, stay away from the sun. Being in the sun might pose risk of skin cancer.
An expert, Mr. Kenneth Enwa observed that there has been noticeable changes in terms of “What is happening now is the climate change we are talking about. It implies variation in the normal climatic condition of an area. The climate is varying and when this continues over a length of time, it becomes ‘change’. It varies in a short period but changes over a long time. “Right now, the temperature is extremely hot, I mean unbearably hot. “The reason for this is simple. There is variation in the weather/climate of every locality in the world, but people thought it was a ruse.
“Now, the issue is that human activities are endangering the very existence of human lives both in the urban and rural areas. Humans have become enemies to themselves. “First, we have rising populations. If you measure the inter-distance between homes, you will notice that it is rapidly decreasing. Take the number of people per room in every locality, you will notice a sharp rise.
Mr. Louis Uwa said “what we are experiencing now is an accumulation of the dangers done to the environment over time. Because of this, we are having a very high accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is a very high accumulation of methane gas in the atmosphere, same as water vapour. All these plus other smaller gases are not allowing the entry of solar radiation. On hitting the earth surface, it is prevented from escaping into the planetary space.
“The heat released by the sun’s rays is expected to escape into the atmosphere. But these gases go to seal the upper level of the troposphere above, preventing the exit of this so-called heat into the atmosphere. This heat now returns to earth causing this regime of heat wave which is very injurious to human survival.
The medical doctor also explained that the current hot weather condition being experienced at the moment is called heat wave. “In the desert,” he said, “we have excess of heat, sometimes it is experienced even in Europe. There, it is called heat stroke. Whatever name you call it, it kills.
“Heat wave causes dehydration. This deprives the muscles and the cells enough water to function and makes re-hydration difficult. “When there is dehydration, infection occurs more easily. The heat causes the cells to get drained, they get tired and this can cause the heart to stop functioning. Then death follows.” To buttress his point, he called attention to the fact that a baby’s body has about 60 per cent of water, while an adult’s has 35-40 per cent of water. He said: “If the water in the body is drained, it affects the cardiovascular system. That leads to death. The brain too might not be able to function normally. The individual goes into coma and dies. So, heat wave affects all the functioning of the system of the body. It is just like someone who has diarrhea and passing a lot of water, especially in children, that kills easily.”
Pharmacist George Nkemdilim in Asaba affirmed that “heat causes the body chemistry to be above normal and the average person to continue to feel uncomfortable. “High temperature affects people differently based on their body chemistry. It triggers certain reactions in people. For a pregnant woman, you see her seeking for cooler places, lying down on the bare floor because her entire body system is hot and reacting to the heat.”
“People should endeavour to stay in cool sheds and take a lot of fluid as much as three litres of water daily. That is very important. If one can increase the fluid intake to five litres, it is even better. People should take their bath always just as frequently as they can.
People should soak themselves in water in the afternoon and at night before going to bed.” He further explained that “we encourage people to as often as possible avoid direct heat contact. People who are albino should avoid direct heat contact with the hot sun’s rays during this period because it leads to cancer of the skin among them. As the heat persists, the only thing that Nigerians may perhaps, choose over the hot weather is the current economic hardship in the country. Uwa said “we are adjusting to the heat, which is much easier to do.”
