Tropical Storm Noel

Dear God, help me to understand. You promised to never flood the whole world again. But to these people, this is their world. This is all they have.

I woke up throughout the night to hear the rain pounding outside. It was really fitful sleep because of the storm. At times the thunder shook so hard I felt myself jerk awake. At one point around three this morning I woke up to a ton of commotion outside my window. At first I thought it was time to get up, but when I noticed the time, I fell back asleep. However, later I woke up at seven to see a flooded front yard and I knew there wouldn’t be classes.

I wasn’t aware of the extent of the damage, only that the world was silent except from the continuous stream from the clouds. Later I learned that two houses inside of our orphanage had flooded during the night. The older boys' house as well as one of the kids’ houses. They had two feet of water inside and had evacuated to our house. Last night the two rivers near us also flash flooded and met in the middle in places. Many houses were completely swept away and 60 people have been declared killed. I hope that all of my students are okay.

After breakfast we walked just outside of the orphanage and I could already see the tragedy. We went to two houses that we helped clean out. There was still 2-3 inches of mud on all of the floors. All we had to work with were buckets and more muddy water to rinse with. I spent hours bent over and on my hands and knees picking up mud with my bare hands and putting it in buckets. The stench kept turning my stomach and sending it half way up my esophagus. It was all I could do to keep it down. I could hear the pigs just feet from the house and I knew the water that know filled the homes had flowed right through their pens on its way downhill.

After we had collected most of the mud caked on the floors, we went to find water for rinsing the floor. We filled buckets from the river and brought it back to dump on the floors. However, the river water was brown like weak chocolate milk. I couldn’t believe that we were using mud to clean mud. It seemed worthless. Somehow though, we finally finished. The house was not large. Just one bedroom, an entry way/dining room/living room, and a kitchen/laundry room. As we brought back in their belongings to put their house together, I couldn’t believe how little they had. All I saw for food was two crabs, half a cup of juice, and an egg. They had all of their clothes (five people) stored in the washing machine. That’s maybe two outfits per person including what they had on their backs.

I felt helpless leaving knowing that it continues to rain. Two more inches and they’ll flood again. I wish that I had a picture but I know that I will never forget what it looked like. A concrete shack with a tin roof tied on. It looked no better than the chicken coops and pig pens.

At another house we helped scrub belongings in buckets of dirty water. Books lay scattered in mud with pages everywhere. The girl sat there holding her dictionary, slowing turning the pages, knowing that it could never be recovered. After we had done what we could to clean the homes, we delivered food to the houses that seemed to have suffered the worst damage. We knew the people at most of them. At one house, a mom sat in a chair with five pictures she had recovered sitting on her lap. She was carefully trying to dry them. At another house, two friends were embracing and crying. I couldn’t understand the words between sobs, but pain is a universal language.

By the time we made it back to the orphanage I was freezing. I had been standing in dripping clothes with rain running down my forehead for four hours. What I really wanted was a warm shower, and I could have definitely used some sweet smelling soap as well. Instead, I rinsed off in the rain, changed, and called it good.

Compared to the loss I saw this morning, we are really well off. But we still suffered from the storm. We haven’t had power for 24 hours straight. And there is no more clean water to pump. All we have is whatever currently sits in the tank on our roof. They are predicting more water Thursday but that’s three days away. So we are conserving water. No showers, no laundry, quick dish washing, and limited for cooking. It’s strange to realize that the reason we don’t have water is because of excess water outside. It’s so close but so far. It continues to rain. Our main road in the orphanage has washed away in places. I feel so disconnected from the world. My phone died and here is not internet. Here I am in the middle of a tropical storm and I’ll be the last person to know what’s going to happen.

"Praise be go the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the Lord of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in a any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God." 2 Corinthians 1:3-4