Sunday, November 11, 2007

The Rain Storm and why you should always close the windows

This Friday, the 26th of October was not an awesome day. It basically started with my only Friday class which was not horrible, but also not great. Anyway I thought the day would be mediocre at best seeing as what I really wanted to be doing was going to Bajoudai for the whipping fete and instead I was in Copargo, waiting for the first teacher’s meeting. Which was to say the leas,t horrible, uncomfortable desk seats for 3 hours, and I really just can’t pay attention for that along especially when everything is in French. I kept focus until they had one of the teachers read a four page document all the way through, then I lost my focus and honestly didn’t understand a single word after that. Then when I thought I was blessedly free of the meeting they told me that now we had to go to the buvette… so off we all go to the buvette while I’m explaining that while I’m not a muslim I also still don’t drink. This confounded them. It started to rain as we got to the buvette and within 5 minutes it was a down pour, all out thunder lightening, power outage, wind whipping storm, that lasted for 45 minutes before it let up enough for me to feel safe biking home. Meanwhile I was happily thinking during the mostly silent buvette trip well at least my buckets which I left outside will be full… only to get home to one of the girls in my concession saying I had forgotten to close my windows. My heart just dropped, at first when I walked in I thought it wouldn’t be so bad, the floor in the salon seemed mostly dry and the study didn’t look too bad, but then I went into my bedroom where I had a small lake, at least a half an inch of water, on the floor and almost everything I own was wet, including my ipod and my laptop. I can’t even begin to tell you, I pretty much just sat there too tired to even cry for the horrible day just made absolutely and completely awful. So this was about 8 pm and tiredly started mopping up the water using rags a dust pan and my broom. I spread things out to let them dry and closed all the windows, by the time I had mopped up all the standing water I had 2/3 of a bucket full of water, I finished by setting my fan to blow at the floor for the night and by 10 was finally able to start cooking dinner. I feel the need at this point to thank my dad who through his effortless sense of humor managed to get my mind off how completely distressed I was by the fact that my laptop and my ipod could very well be broken and never work again and that many of my papers and photos were destroyed. So I got to bed completely exhausted just around eleven telling myself that things would be dry and look better in the morning.
They did, the floor except for a few resistant patches was totally dry, most of the paper, a bit crinkled and with slightly runny ink are dry and legible. The ipod and the laptop are turning on and functioning without glitches. I couldn’t ask more considering the extent of the disaster.
Lesson learned.

2 comments:

loehrke said...

You may have arleady received this comment, if so just delete this one.Sorry!!!
I was so, so, so, so sad when I read about your rain disaster. I sure hope that all of your electronic stuff came back OK. It just seems like you have so few things there that it isn't fair when some of them get messed up. Boo!!!
There's a favorite quote of mine that I think is attributed to Mother Teresa. It goes something like, "It is said that God won't give you more than you can handle. I sure wish God didn't have so much confidence in me sometimes." Here's wishing you more HAPPINESS and less struggle.
With great affection, Carly's dad

K. said...

Thank GOD your ipod and laptop still work!!

I've been meaning to send you a care-package, but I've always been bad with surprises - you need to post a list of things you'd like/need!

*love*
Kam