As the waters recede, we gather the flotsam and jetsam of what we took for granted before the rains came. And amid chaos, locals unite to rebuild essential bridges, showcasing solidarity and determination to restore normalcy.

For those of us who have lived through the floods in greater Kruger Park, it wasn't the water that hurt us.

It wasn't the white noise pelting down on our roofs and lives, unceasingly. But when it did cease, and there was momentary silence, the pitter-patter of droplets on red earth would reappear. It was the sound of more sheets of water that would now spill and spread on deeply saturated soil all over again.

But it wasn't the sound of the returning storm that broke our hearts.

The reckoning emerged in the realisation of what the waters took from us.

It is a form of grief.

"How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also troubled -- roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply?" the poet Mary Oliver writes in Heavy, her poem on grief.

Grief is love without an answer.

Some Lowvelders are still cut off by the ferocious flood waters that blew in from Mozambique last week. Settlements have been destroyed, lodges submerged and about 40 people lost their lives. At least 400mm of rain claimed...