flood

August 26, 2010

flood: (n) a great flowing or overflowing of water, esp. over land not usually submerged.

"Where have you been?!" he asked tiredly. I was supposed to call Andrew hours ago. "Well, have I got a story for you! You are never going to believe what happened tonight…"

The rain started just as we were leaving school. Of course every day is sweltering hot while I'm stuck in a classroom and as soon as I can leave to go home and enjoy the rest of the day, the clouds tumble down the mountain and release their weight on the town. It sprinkled and bit and let up so the walk home wasn’t bad.

Tonight was my night to call Andrew. We talk twice a week now, not a bad system. I checked my phone to see how much Lempira I had left. The phones here are pay as you go. You put money on your phone and when the money's gone you can't make any more phone calls until you put more on again. As far as cost per minute, it's anyone's guess. All I knew tonight was that I needed money on my phone. The rain had stopped but the sky still lingered black and it wouldn't be long before dark. I took a trip down the hill to buy more "minutes". The very moment I stepped outside to begin my walk the sky opened up and began to pour. I contemplated taking a left and hiding at the boys house on my way home. La Union was being swallowed by the thundercloud, I could feel the static in the air. It's actually amazing that I didn't get struck by lightning, this storm was different than storms in the past. I made it to the apartment downstairs, where Albin and Osiris now live.

When the wind began to blow, I raced upstairs to close my windows. Windows here do not have seals like in the states, I closed them as tightly as I could and listened as the air howled through the gaps. Andrea and Dilcia, one of the hired hands at the house, were outside at the stove making tortillas for tonight's Baliadas. On my way to say hello I was awestruck by the light show in the sky. Under the shelter of the porch roof outside our front door I sat on the dining room chair and gazed at the sky. Even though I love living here, there are thing about home that I miss, thunderstorms being one of them. Tonight's violent weather was a comfort and reminder of home. In what seemed like slow motion, I watched as a lightning bolt squiggled out of the sky and struck the cell phone tower in town. The sparks from the sky illuminated the town and blinded me. The explosion of the thunder crack brought me back to reality and I let out a scream. My body was tightly curled into a ball on the chair. Bryony, who was also helping with tortillas, came running around the corner into the house, Holly emerged from her bedroom. "What was that?!" Apparently in England they don't have storms like this. I encouraged them both to pull up a chair and enjoy the show. Some time later Karen, the other hired hand in the house, came upstairs looking for the broom. In her hurried Spanish I was pretty sure she said there was a lot of water downstairs. Curious, I left the girls and went downstairs to see what was going on.

The stairwell was dark and I couldn't find the bottom step. I lowered my foot to feel around and was met with water. I withdrew my foot and tried to see when a lightning flash lit up the driveway where the stairs let out. Water, brown water, everywhere. Both pick up trucks' tires were half submerged. Around the corner Karen was in the apartment desperately trying to sweep out the water which had already flooded the living room about an inch. Josue and Josaline were crying out for their parents. To the right I saw the silhouettes of Albin and Osiris in the street which had become a river and the river was flowing down the driveway into the house. Quickly I ran upstairs and jumped into my rain boots. I ran back down the stairs and joined Albin and Osiris. They were digging a trench to defer the water from their house while simultaneously building up a barrier with what rocks they could move. This image is something I will never forget. Osiris, in flip flops, was on her hands and knees in the road digging with her bare hands as hard as she could at rocks to build a barricade. In water up to his knees, Albin was digging and kicking at the dirt beneath the river to alter its course away from the house. The rain could not have been coming down any harder. Thunder and lightning were all around, cracking and flashing in every which direction. The danger of the storm was no match for the determination of this couple to protect their home and family.

My raincoat and rain boots were no match for this storm. I knelt down beside Osiris and started grabbing at anything I could that would hold up against the water. We dug up some broken tiles and used them as shovels. Bryony and Holly came down to check what was going on and immediately jumped into action. We started carrying things out of the flooded rooms to use as barriers, old shelves, cupboard doors. Our efforts seemed successful enough after some time. We left the street and Albin had already begun draining the water from the driveway. I don't even know if Osiris was aware of the two rooms at the bottom of the stairs until I asked her what we should do about them. Buckets, bowls and pots were our tools to get the water out of these rooms. Each room was being used for storage and was full, floor to ceiling, of their belongings. Now, it was also full of about 2 feet of water. We spent the rest of the night bailing water out the doors and windows of both rooms. Brown dirty flood water splashed into my eyes and mouth with every sweep of the bucket, while the rain outside continued to pour.

"We can see the floor!" Holly cried out from the other room. Our efforts had paid off and all that remained was a few inches of water that was nearly impossible to bail out with a bucket. About this time some friends of Albin showed up with a pump. A man set the pump down on the water covered floor of the room I was standing in and took out the chord that is suppose to plug into the wall. There was, however, no prong for an outlet at the end of this chord, only bare wires. I decided quickly that it was time for me to go. Osiris suggested that we all had to eat at some point and the women, soaked to the bone with muddy flood water, retreated to the house for some food. The flood interrupted cooking dinner big time. Baliadas was the plan, which we sort of had. Just beans and tortillas, but after what we went through we were all just happy to be eating. On full stomachs we mingled back over to where the men were causing flickering in the electricity with their pump. Most all of the water had gone and what was left behind was utter disaster. For tonight, getting rid of the water was all that could be done. It was time to rest now, everything else would wait for morning.