From showroom to wreckage — designer’s dream drowned in Monday’s Tse Addo flood
A creative entrepreneur has watched the fruits of months of labour dissolve into mud and standing water, his tools rendered useless, his inventory obliterated and his ability to fulfill client commitments evaporated in the span of hours as the capital’s floodwaters consumed his Tse Addo premises.
Michael Brett Odoom, a fashion designer and co-founder of The Cultured Man enterprise known by the moniker Nateev, disclosed the scale of destruction, with his words carrying the weight of devastation still unprocessed by a mind reeling from the catastrophe.
The deluge spared nothing. His residence disappeared beneath the surge, forcing him to flee with nothing but the clothes on his back — items he later learned belonged to someone else, borrowed out of necessity when he realised his entire wardrobe had been claimed by the floodwaters.
His workshop, once a hive of creative activity, now exists as a submerged graveyard of equipment and raw materials.
“I came to the workshop, and everything is sitting in water and mud — machines, fabrics, everything is gone. The whole place is messed up, and we don’t even know where to start,” Odoom described.
The loss extends beyond monetary replacement cost. The machinery he had invested in merely five or six months prior represents technology requiring specialised expertise to repair or restore — expertise unavailable within Ghana’s technical landscape. Technical problems necessitate consultation with Chinese manufacturers and the procurement of components from abroad, a logistical nightmare when the equipment lies submerged and corroded.
Beyond the solitary entrepreneur lies a team dependent upon him for livelihood. Odoom oversees fourteen individuals whose employment now hangs suspended. The collective must locate alternative workspace, salvage whatever materials can be rescued and somehow resume production for clients whose orders perish alongside the destroyed inventory.
“We are 14 in number. So together with my workers, we have to look for where to go. I don’t even know where we are starting from because people had things with us that needed to be delivered. So I have issued a press release, pleading with my clients to be patient with us,” Odoom explained, the practical impossibility of his situation laid bare.
Yet amid the wreckage, Odoom has discovered pockets of grace. His church community, Makers House Chapel, mobilised to express solidarity. Fellow designers and friends have reached out with offers of support, their names blurring together in a fog of shock and emotional exhaustion.
“I want to say a big thank you to my church, Makers House Chapel. They have called to solidarise with me, as well as my friends and co-fashion designers. A lot of people have reached out, and I can’t even remember all the names because my mind is not stable,” he said.
He ended his account not with resignation but with a plea to forces beyond human engineering: “I am just praying for a miracle because it is only God who can restore me.”
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