Friday, October 14, 2011

RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY…

It has now rained for eight days straight! This has been NO LIGHT RAIN.  I woke up yesterday to water all over my bedroom floor (which could have been a real problem because the side where the water came in has my one electrical outlet in the room with two power cords and several plugged in items.  They were on the floor that got wet.  My mosquito net was all wet on the bottom.  All the rooms on the east side of my house had leaked water into the rooms and onto the floors.  I’ve been cleaning up water for days that has leaked under my kitchen door, but this was the first time it came into the other three rooms.

 I took a video of the rain when I ended up not even going to school yesterday because of the rain.  The school bus got stuck in the mud on the playground after his second round of picking kids up, so he hadn’t even left the school yard for his third round by the time the third group were supposed to be at school.  I called Peter, and he said, “Just stay home today, it’s okay.  Stay warm.”  I did just that.  I got out of my school clothes (I was ready to walk out the door when I talked to him), put on my sweats, wrapped up in my little blanket, and read my book – that is WHEN I had electricity so I could see.  About 10 minutes after I got settled in, the electricity went out.  It was so dark outside because of the rain that it was hard to see in the house in the middle of the day.  The electricity went on and off several more times throughout the day and night.  (I’ve learned to place flashlights and candles in strategic spots in the house, now.)

(I just tried to download three videos, but it doesn't want to download them.  Maybe I'll try another day. Sorry about that!)

I woke up this morning to discover that the ceiling in my dining room had fallen to the floor.  Luckily, it wasn’t over my bed!  Samuel and Grace came over this afternoon to clean up the mess and to scrape termite deposits off the wall in Pauline’s room (the owner).  Grace told me the other day that a house just down the street from me (really more like a hut, I think) had totally collapsed from all the rain.  Luckily, the people had moved out the day before because they could see what was going to happen.  At least I still have a house!

I was encouraged this morning since it didn’t start to rain until I got to school, and it was fairly light.  I finally headed off to swim laps and teach lessons later this afternoon.  Unfortunately, the pool had started to turn green this week with all the rain, so Nicholas had put chemicals in it in the morning.  He had run out of another chemical he needed to finish the job, so the pool was rather murky.  He said it was okay to swim in, but it didn’t look too inviting.  It was way too much effort to get there to not swim, so I swam my laps, anyway, trying hard not to get any of the water in my mouth.  I didn’t, however, think it was a good idea for the ladies to be in the shallow end for lessons – it looked even worse there!  Maybe next week…

After swimming, Kenneth brought his two younger girls home from school, and he and I went grocery shopping on his way back to pick up Leila, his oldest daughter.  He dropped me off at Safaricom to buy more time for my internet modem stick while he went for Leila.  Well, guess what happened while I was in the store?  It started to RAIN again!  Ugh!!!

I was planning on meeting up with Ternet, a teacher from school, tomorrow after classes are out at 4:00.  She wants to show me her village – which means riding a matatu to her neighborhood and then walking some distance to her home.  With all the rain, it may not work out now to go tomorrow because it would be so muddy and difficult to walk through.  We may have to do it another day.  I’m supposed to call her at lunchtime tomorrow, and then we’ll decide.

Oh, by the way, would someone who lives in the northern hemisphere please perform a little experiment for me?  I’ve always wondered about this, and now I can actually find out.  Put some water in your sink with a stopper in it.  Then, open the stopper and see which way the water swirls.  I’m wondering if it swirls one direction in the northern hemisphere, and a different direction in the southern hemisphere because of the gravitational pull.  Then, if you would just click on “Comment” at the bottom of my blog, you can tell me.  After you do your experiment, I’ll tell you which way mine swirls.  Deal?

Well, that about raps it up for tonight.  I’m going to TRY to get some sleep in spite of the loud music coming from the church 1 ½ blocks away.  They do this every Friday night until around 2:00 AM.!  Hope you are enjoying better weather than we’ve been having wherever you are in the world.  (I’ve got people from five different countries reading my blog.) 

Sleep well and stay dry!

Kadi