If I hadn’t left work today early, at 4:30 instead of, say 5 or 5:30 as per usual, I would have been totally nailed. As it was, I walked the almost 2 miles home in a terrific thunder and lightning storm sans rain. But it was coming. It had rained really hard at about 4, then stopped, but the thunder and lightning continued. The thunder sounded like someone really big had even bigger sheets of metal that they were banging around. Like they would show being used in movies depicting stage shows back in the 30’s or 40’s. The lightning cracked loud and hard and you could see the bolts hit somewhere far off. Or so I hoped.
I took out my umbrella then thought better of it. So I put on my hat to help me retain a bit of my body heat. Yeah, it had cooled off, and the wind was cool. Refreshingly cool. Now I know why they want it to rain. As I walked in this basically flat area with trees here and there, I tried to separate my thunderstorm facts and fiction. Okay, first, don’t walk around in it, right? Check. Uh, no choice, so uncheck. Then certainly don’t use an umbrella. Checkaroo. Stay away from trees. Check, except when I have to walk by them. Then walk with someone taller than you. Struck out there. No one was going my way.
There were a lot of people out in it, though. They didn’t have much choice either. I guess they figured that the chance of getting struck by lightning is pretty minimal compared to say, contracting a sexually transmitted disease, dying in a car accident or from heart disease, a stroke, or diabetes or something else less sudden. At one point I smelled the smell of burned hair, but didn’t see anyone lying around, so I am sure it wasn’t lightening related.
I stopped by the fat cake lady to order 100 fat cakes for Saturday’s clean up event. She raised her eyebrows but said she would bring even more than 100. I told her, hopefully understandably, that I was only paying for 100, so if she brought more, she would have to collect money from someone else. We have no idea how many people will come, and how many of those will actually work or just eat fat cakes, but it is the first organized community event the Otse Disability Support Group has done since I have been here, if not longer, and the word has been spreading. Hopefully not just about free fat cakes, but also that we need help cleaning the property and getting it ready for a garden. If we have a good crowd, we might get somewhere. Apparently a few churches are coming (well their members, that is), and I was told they like to work. Fire and brimstone is sometimes a good thing.
The contractor is busy on the building as well, and his guys of course poured the concrete for the path today, so were busily covering it from the impending rain when I stopped by there. Bad timing but such is the nature of concrete work. In fact, I am pretty sure the only reason it finally rained is because they poured that concrete. We shall see tomorrow what is what.
I got to see how much my route will be rerouted with the rain, when it comes regularly. Even though it wasn’t raining anymore on my walk, the gullies were full and water was flowing from what is probably a marshy area in the spring and summer, but up to now had just been a nice short cut. The piles of dirt they have put everywhere to re-dirt the roads was already running off, without ever having experienced being part of a roadway. Potential lost forever, right down the road.
When I finally arrived home, I opened my garden gate, walked up to my porch, put my back pack down and went to retrieve my wet clothes hanging on the clothes line. I took them inside and hung them, then went out for my back pack, which I had left ever so briefly outside. The rain had finally come, and my back pack was pretty well soaked in that short time. When it rains here, it really pours.
The lightning and thunder continued for hours, but I guess either because of the reduction in heat and thus use of air-con, or there is a Ben Franklin type out there with a kite harnessing all this electrical current into the system, my power has stayed on all evening and I even got hot water.
I heard on the news they are predicting water shortages in my area over the next few days- just when all that water fell down from the sky. Go figure. Sadly, the Girls have borrowed and not returned all my empty soda and water bottles so I am filling up buckets, pots and pitchers just in case. And I took that hot bath. Just in case it will be a few days before I get any kind of bath, unless I step outside.
When we were with our families in Kanye, some of the PCVs felt harassed by their family members to take two baths a day. My family had a cold house in the winter so they only expected me to do it once a day, which while not excessive, was at times painfully cold. With the heat here I now take them twice a day and would take one mid-day if I could: the cooler the better.
Tomorrow we will see the damage the rain did, if any, to the concrete. It felt like home for a minute – trying to pour concrete and do brick work without getting everything rained on. Good times.
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