Rainy season adventures

I love the rainy season. I guess it comes from having lived with drought for some many years. Today I was out and about this afternoon when a tropical thunderstorm rumbled in. I donned my rain poncho, and headed on my way. It wasn't long until I joined the crowd seeking shelter at a petrol station. It poured, and it poured, and then it poured some more. At times the wind blew the rain in under the roof, and I ended sitting in about a centimetre of water. Being on holidays, I decided to just sit and enjoy the experience and watch the storm. Where I was, on a main intersection, it was interesting to watch the traffic continue to move, with some impatient drivers racing to get through the lights and others approaching things more cautiously.

I'd been sitting there for about 15 minutes or so when along came two young men who I would consider pretty clever. On the back of their motos, and in a bag over the handlebars, was a plentiful supply of plastic raincoats! They had obviously worked out that there was money to be made selling raincoats to "stranded" moto riders. They did the rounds of those waiting, bypassing me since I already had my big poncho on, and then headed off into the rain to the next servo.

Eventually, when it looked like the rain had eased about, and as I noticed that roads were flooding, I decided to head out. Getting out of the servo required going through some flood water, and then the main road home was OK. Once I turned onto the street the school is on I discovered that it was flooded. Not too bad, in that it wasn't too deep and I did manage to navigate it reasonably well, without the bike stalling. By the time I got to my own street that too was flooded, but not badly. Life's fun! Once the rain stopped the water went down reasonably quickly around my place. I imagine it wasn't so quick to get away in other areas though. It's still raining as I write this, although it did stop for an hour or so. Once again I'm glad I have a dry place to sleep tonight. There will be many in Phnom Penh who don't tonight.

Rainy season arrives with a vengeance

Life in Cambodia is always full of challenges and the unexpected. The last two afternoons as I've been working in my classroom I had to get the mop out! Yes, the rainy season appears to have begun. Yesterday afternoon was't too bad. I know from past experience that the rain tends to drip from the top of the window frame onto the floor when the rain comes from a certain direction, and that's what happened yesterday. Since I was still there when the leaking started, I quickly pulled up some of the foam mats and set them to dry. It wasn't too bad, and by the time we came in this morning all the water had evaporated. No problem.

This afternoon was a little different. I was sitting at my desk when it started, thinking, this isn't to heavy. Maybe it will be a light shower this evening. As I was thinking that things changed, and next thing I knew the  water was streaming down the windows. I went to take a photo, but quickly discovered that the windows weren't keeping that rain out. It was coming in, and quite a lot of things were in grave danger of a soaking, including posters, and sheets of cardboard, my keyboard, and my classroom library! I quickly moved everything I could, including my desk and filing cabinet. Then I heard the sound of secondary students coming down the stairs. They'd obviously just finished an exam, so I quickly recruited some of the young men to help me move the bookshelf with the classroom library on it. The photo below shows where there water reached (and it actually spread further after this photo was taken). Each of those tiles is about 50cm across, so you can see there's a fair bit of water there. Of course, moving things that hadn't been moved since August left a fair bit of grime exposed too, so I'll be busy cleaning the classroom tomorrow morning. Hopefully some of the water will have evaporated by then. 

The rain was blowing so hard our "internal" staircases had water flowing down them, and I'm positive my classroom won't be the only one that suffered water inundation. It was like someone turned a hose on full bore at the windows and just blasted them with water. I guess the windows will be lovely and clean now! I'm just glad I was there and able to get most of my stuff out of harms way.

The rain eased for a while, and then came back again, this time blowing in the opposite direction, so I don't think any classrooms will have totally escaped the impact. Might be a bit of cleaning up and throwing out to do on Monday morning. Eventually the storm lessoned, and I looked up to see the most amazing sunset through my classroom window. The photo below doesn't really capture it, but it was just beautiful. The sky was orange and red (almost like it was on fire). As I look at it, I'm reminded of just how powerful God is, and of His promises to never leave us. In the power of the storm, and rain, I was also reminded of His love, and the promise of a new day tomorrow.