"The Rain"

One week ago, it rained hard for the first time in many months. We were ready for rain, looking forward to it, it's been getting hotter and hotter since December began, and so dry and dusty and brown. It needed to rain, it tried to for a few days, and finally last Friday night, the heavens opened. And so arrived "winter" here, the rainy season. It has rained every day since last Friday, and will keep it up for the next 3 or 4 months. Sometimes light rain, sometimes tropical downpours that have to be seen to be believed. Downpours that are like waterfalls from the sky, pouring down onto a city that can't handle that much water arriving at one time. So streets flood, houses flood, streets of Bastion that were dry, hard packed and dusty a week ago, become huge mud puddles.

I have to be honest - I haven't dealt with this first week of the rain very well. It brings major and minor inconveniences with it, and I'm a pampered Canadian, not used to having to deal with these things in my life. The first rain brings out the "grillos", rather large (big ones can be a good 2 inches long) members of the cricket family. I have no problem with crickets, I've always quite liked them, you can't beat the sound of crickets on an August evening. But these are crickets on a whole different scale, they're way bigger than Canadian crickets, they come into the house at night through every little opening they can find, fly up at you from nowhere, chew holes in your clothes, and if one gets into your bedroom, the noise will keep you awake all night. My cat has proven useless at dealing with them, she plays with them for a few minutes, then loses interest. So I think this is the real reason for wearing flip flops here, there's always a weapon ready, pull one off, one quick smack, and that's another one dispatched.

Then there's the river of rainwater that has been flowing through my kitchen from under the door. Someone cleverly designed the bit of concrete that's outside the back door to slope towards the house, so that really only leaves one place for the water to go. The other night there was a mighty thunderstorm, knocked out the power and torrents of rain came down. So I was out the back door, ankle deep, in the pitch dark with a flashlight clasped between my knees, trying to find somewhere else for all that water to go. Then there's the matter of laundry - it's so humid that it won't dry, by the time it does it has that nasty smell. Everything is damp, green slime is already growing in places, I think maybe even on me!! And it's suddenly much hotter, feels that way anyway with the humidity. And the mosquitoes are out in hordes..... It's all made me feel a tad cranky!

But I have absolutely no business complaining, because then I go to visit Bastion. And all the difficulties that I'm dealing with in my comparative luxury, are there in those homes too, only magnified and multiplied. It only took 2 rainfalls to turn the streets into mud, so the water that flows into those homes is muddy, and it comes in the many holes in their roofs, and between the slats of the bamboo walls. They can't get washing dry either, and they don't have an nice empty upstairs room to hang it in. School is almost finished, so that means little kids all underfoot inside tiny houses. Every errand becomes a huge challenge of negotiating your way through all that mud, trying to find the least mucky route. And that stuff is slippery! It's so easy to fall, and you don't really want to go down in that. Really you don't!

So I have nothing but respect for the people who live in Bastion and the many other squatter areas just like it. They don't lie down and give up, like I've been tempted to do, they just get on with it, and do what they have to do to keep on surviving, and I've even seen them smile, yes even laugh about

it. If they can, so can I!!