And while we found the means to adapt to the harsh weather conditions, to sleep on empty stomachs due to the prolonged drought and watch our livestock and crops starve to death, they hopped from bar to beach, land to air enjoying nothing but the luxuries procured with our taxes.

But that has changed. The clouds have opened and the ground has levelled. The rich and the poor alike lose sleep whenever the cloud forms above their roofs. While the poor cannot walk to the garden or makeshift workshop where he makes a living, the rich too cannot drive their fancy cars in peace, the waters are higher than their 4WD cars take on.

The day schooling children in Bunyonyi cannot get to their school but neither can the day – care children in Kasokoso or the university going proletariat in Kyambogo. And while we endure the same type of food throughout the year in Isingiro, the Kampala middle class cannot stop talking about the current prices of groceries – two tomatoes at Shs1, 000 – onions alike.

While the rain is washing away people’s homes while they sleep in Busoga, it is also throwing down 45 year-old trees in the parking of fancy hotels and urban neighbourhoods, damaging properties in the millions of shillings. Not that this is a good thing but for once, the feeling of the general population is beginning to synchronise and the attitude towards the glaring questions of the day has taken a big battering.

For once, everyone is suddenly awake to the fact that climate change is real and is certainly tired of being ignored. It is making a statement that is sending shivers through even those who dismissed it as unreal and a hoax. These same ‘sceptics’ are the ones who cut trees for charcoal, erect buildings in wetlands and block drainage channels with impunity. Now the water is finding them in their scented apartments, covering their tiled floors.

Not that this is a good thing or that I am enjoying it but I have waited so long for a time when we can candidly have that long overdue conversation on climate change mitigation and how best we can adapt to the new way of life. If you’re cooking using charcoal or firewood, do you ever wonder where it comes from? Did you also know that there exists cheaper and more sustainable yet environmental friendly sources of energy that can cook your food equally well?

We have all seen those government officials returning from their villages with government trucks filled with firewood and charcoal. Are these the people you are counting on to implement laws for you?

Enough talk. Let us take some action. Make it your responsibility to plant a tree after you cut one. Attempt to tap and store rain water before the drought sets in. Don’t let an ‘investor’ come and build in the wetland near you and if some unscrupulous worker forgot to cover the manhole he dug near your home, cover it.

The challenge before us is, are you going to stop littering plastics carelessly, burning bushes and charcoal mercilessly? Are you going to stop cutting trees at pleasure and building in wetlands just because you can afford it? This is a wake-up call, when skies cry, expect no mercy.