A river runs through it

This is the view down our street at our new house looking back toward the main road from in front of our gate, which is just out of view on the left side of the picture. Our street is called rue Château d'eau, which mean Water Tower Street. It's called that because we are just around the corner from the water tower for our neighborhood in the city. We're coming to the end of the rainy season. As I write, we're getting some rain which will probably be one of our last rains until next May/June. This rainy season, though, we discovered that our street at this house becomes a river when we get a heavy rain. Our street is lower that than the main road, so all the water from the main road runs into our street. The problem is that our street is a dead end, so there's no where for the water to go except into the yard of people's houses on the street whose gates are below the water level.


Here's a view of our street after a heavy rain. The water was 2 feet deep at some points.

Unfortunately, our gate was one of the gates that were lower than the water level, so the river on our street flowed into our yard. This happened twice this rainy season. The first time I was gone and the water in the yard was already almost up to the level of our porch. Then, the water from the street started flowing in the gate, which put our house in danger of being flooded. Krista took control and built a barricade in front of our gate. She grabbed cinder blocks from around our yard, an old shower curtain and shoveled sand from the street to stop the flow of water in the gate. A guard from the house across the street jumped in to help her. Our guard was pretty impressed that night when I told him what Krista had done.

Apparently this wasn't a new problem. Over the years people on the street have tried to solve the problem. Everyone build up the levels of their gates at one point. Then someone had the bright idea of filling in the street with more sand, which meant that the gate at our house was no longer above the street level. Later on, someone build a raised ramp at the end of the street by the main road with a small wall coming out from it on either side. That worked until owner of the house around the corner broke a hole through the wall to divert the street water from flowing in his yard and back onto our street.

After building a barricade at the gate during a second heavy rain, we decided to raise up the level of our gate again.
Here's the front of our gate from the street side. The level of the gate is now a foot higher than it was before. This won't solve the problem of the river on our street, but it should keep the river from flowing into our yard.
Here's our gate from inside our yard.