Sandy's something!

Tuesday evening we had Anita for supper as the storm was thinking of starting. The children sure enjoy their aunt!

Hurricane Sandy has been an experience for us all. Tuesday it blew off and on, and started raining some. Wednesday we were waiting for the team, and watching the increasing wind and rain with a concerned eye. Praise the Lord, the team arrived sooner than expected, with a good--if wet and muddy--trip behind them. The rain and wind increased as the day wore on, and pounded us pretty good through the night. My recollection of the this storm is likely to be most the sounds. Maybe in part due to my ears not still being recovered from their waxy ordeal, or maybe just because we can't see much from our front porch. The wind didn't howl or scream as I've heard many times in the north. It thundered. We could hear it roaring up the valley, and soon the sound was all around us, engulfing us in waves of tossing branches, flying leaves, and the steady sound of the wind pounding through the mountain passes. The rain, sounding against a thin metal roof, seemed more like a waterfall being poured around us than a rain storm. As the river rose, a faint roar could be heard through lulls in the storm. Sometime through the night there was a rattle and crash, as the porch roof on the girl's apartment flew up and over, landing upsidedown on their roof and sending a post through the shop roof:

Needless to say the radio quickly crackled on and Anita hollered requesting that Jere please come down. They'd been up all night still at that point (somewhere around 3 am I was told, as I'd been laying awake for who knows how long already) sopping up the water leaking through the concrete wall at a tremendous pace. Three girls could hardly keep ahead of it, sopping it up with towels and wringing it into buckets. Jere and his cousin Julian (came on the team, and will be replacing Jere as the mechanic) ran down through the storm and checked it out as well as they could, pushing one piece of tin back into place in an effort to stanch some of the water flow. At that point the girls decided it was hopeless to try to keep up anymore, and packed up anything that could get ruined by water into plastic totes, then found spots between their leaky roof enough to sleep for a few hours. Jere came back to find that water was now seeping into our house through the office wall, so he and Julian sopped water for awhile in there.

Thursday morning we rubbed the sleep out of still groggy eyes and surveyed the damages through still torrential rain and wind. Here's a shot of the riverbed from our porch--it had been dry only the night before, the large white rocks hiding any previous run-off underneath them:

Our house wall. Those are pieces of leaves, plastered tight to the wall from the wind. Usually the wall is white.

A tree went over the compound fence. They tell me there's another like situation down in the lower fence.

The incredible wind and rain continued more fitfully on Thursday. We provided breakfast for the team--thankfully several of them had slept through the night so there were a few people on the compound who weren't bushed! Unfortuneatley for the trees, we have a somewhat better view from our place now. It was kind of a lazy day. No clinic, hardly anyone at the gate, and we were unable to do much of anything outside. Jaron did school as usual, and many rested.

This morning we woke up to. . . more rain. The wind has pretty well died off, and the rain is, thankfully, coming straight down so we can at least stay dry on the porch, most of the time. Added to noises are the fussies of cranky children who are tired of the weather! We do let them go out and get good and wet when they want to, but still the continuing rain must work on their nerves. And the smells are starting to become more prominant. Added to the fresh, clean smell of the rain is the smell of wet. Old wet. Humid, moist, and mildewy. Wet towels used to dry people shivering from the cold shower. Wet towels used to sop up muddy water from the floors. No where to go to dry anything. Wet jackets that are getting rather fuzzy in places. Wet, dirty jeans that have been tramping through mud and water and laid on the edge of the laundry basket in vain hopes of drying, and are now stacking up. The rain is much more fitfull, but still coming down in buckets off and on. Still no signs of clearing off, or sunshine. But, one of these days I'm sure it will!!! It can't stay this way forever!

I hear a vehicle outside. Makes me wonder if the exploration team got back. They were out checking out damages. And, I assume, that means hopefully being able to tell how many days till we will be able to get out of this valley again! Not that we really need to get out for anything (except, yes, the team's luggage that didn't show up at the airport when they did. . .) but it's still kind of an isolating feeling. Makes me very glad for internet!