May Showers

I have never been afraid in my home. Not once. I say this not to impress you, but merely as a matter of fact. I have never been afraid, although there have been many instances to be afraid, because of this recently-acquired ability not too feel too many real emotions. (It’s called a coping strategy and I do understand that it’s not healthy.)

That was true up until last night. You see, we’ve been having some rains lately. I guess that’s putting it mildly. It has been raining, without fail, at least once, every day for almost 2 weeks. And last night it wasn’t just rain to contend with, it was wild winds, loud thunder, and shiny lightning. (Yes, shiny.) I guess I should start at the beginning…

I was on the phone with a fellow PCV who was telling me about his water project. I commented on the strength of the winds and rain that had just picked up and he concurred that it sounded strong from his end. It continued and as it did, the lightning and thunder began. A bolt came down very near to me and I screamed. I apologized to my friend for having screamed into the phone, and considered hanging up with him but decided the distraction of talking to him might make this storm seem less dramatic. We continued to talk and then all of the sudden what seemed to be about 100 bolts came crashing down all around me. I screamed, took a minute to regroup and then there fell another one, so I screamed again. When I was finally able to put myself together enough to realize that I was screaming into my friend’s ear I got so embarrassed that I couldn’t stop laughing. So it went on like that for a while: screaming, laughing, and of course there was the plugging of the ears and keeling over on the floor because apparently things are less scary from the floor.

He continued to talk and I periodically interrupted his story with a good scream from another bolt. We decided that I was safe in my house, even if my roof was made entirely of metal (which formed a new leak from the rain, dripping into my “closet” which is the cardboard box from my refrigerator). I decided to move to a place where I couldn’t see the lightning as well: my bedroom. The doors in my house all began to crash closed and open from the air coming into the house and I realized that the cat had gotten out of her room. (She and my dog can’t be in the same room because they hate one another, so I’ve been keeping them separated.) So I went chasing after the cat, hoping to catch her before she found my dog, while the lightning and thunder continued. I got her, put her back, and then she was out again from the door having opened back up. She ran under my bed, which I had found out was where the dog was hiding, but neither animal attacked the other. Perhaps they were too petrified. (Certainly their owner would have been giving them reason to be alarmed if the lightning hadn’t had an effect.)

I decided to lock the dog in, and me and the cat out. In so doing I positioned myself to see what was going on outside again and got to see my power lines fall down as a piece of tin roof came rolling down the street. The sky went yellow from the storm (something I learned in Chicago is a sure sign that the storm is worse than originally thought.) The wind made the rain come in at an angle and before long there was rain coming into my porch and underneath my front door. On the porch I watched as 12 bags of cement got effectively ruined from the rain and as the ceramic, tin and steel beams got a nice bath. The rain also collected in a pool in front of my front door until later in the night when a neighbor was nice enough to dig a trench to lead the water away.

Eventually the sky turned from eerie yellow to mellow pink, and then it got dark. The lightning continued for a while but it wasn’t so bad that I stayed inside. I went to take some videos of the rain waters rushing down our street and forming a river in the unpaved road. It’s manageable, however, because it’s not the first time that has happened here, and it certainly won’t be the last.