When rain turns into a river...

I was out the other evening meeting with some NGO colleagues when out of the blue it started to rain. The rain was so heavy it was impossible to walk in. We managed to get into our car under cover to go home, but then we had to go up Delmas, the main street in PAP that runs from the port up to Petionville, where we live. It is a steep hill! It had only been raining for 15 minutes, and already Delmas had turned into a fast flowing river. It was pouring down, and was above the bottom the engine and halfway up the car even on 4x4s. Women got out plastic bags to cover their hairdos and weaves (a very common practice in Haiti and funny for those of us not used to it to see a woman walking around with a supermarket bag on her head!) So there we were driving up a deep river flowing very fast downhill. It seems the drainage trenches that used to exist were destroyed in the earthquake, so the water had nowhere else to go. Pretty soon cars were stuck and being abandoned, and I wondered if we would even get home. Then suddenly it stopped as quickly as it had started, though the river kept flowing. It was in a way fascinating to watch. But then all I could think about were the people living in their tents. They would be very wet, even if their plastic tarpaulins could withstand the force of the rain, and the vast wastelands they live on would have turned to mud. Some even had their "homes" collapse. Hurricane season is coming, and there is little hope for Haiti to avoid it. More misery awaits, as even the few belongings people have left will continue to get wet, damaged and destroyed. I live here and yet I have no concept of what it means to live like that. I can only be thankful, again, that I get to live in a house, and work even harder to raise the money and build the houses that these people need!