Daily Report: Apres Le Deluge, Moi

It still rained all day today... but it had slowed to a heavy drizzle. We went first thing to the family house and amazingly everything was alright. Quite simply, the terrain was just steep enough (although you would never think it by looking at it) to keep the water flowing quickly, and the family house had enough obstacles in front of it to keep the flowing water from directly confronting it, that — while houses 200 feet away, and 3 or 4 feet higher in elevation were damaged heavily by being in the path of the torrent — the family house (with floorboards about 2 feet above ground level) was completely dry. There was just a little damage to the fence in the front yard, and the lower porch area needed a good mopping.

Lucky.



Since the family house was fine, I joined Mike Bird (who had lost 50 feet of fence and a couple of his beloved papaya trees) in helping the neighborhood clean out the cement drainage culvert (about 1 foot wide by 2 feet deep) which feeds the nearby rice paddies. It's clogging was causing a bit of water to still flow through the wrong parts of the neighborhood. I grabbed a shovel and a hoe and got to work clearing out several tons of bamboo, torn up fence, coconuts, and truckloads of sandy mud. I spent the morning in the rain, soaking wet and heaving and hoeing.

At midday, I went back home, had some lunch, and then took a nap.

I bought Epril an iPhone for her upcoming birthday. She's loving it. It even has built-in television, radio, and WiFi internet in addition to being a phone. As soon as they figure out how to incorporate a refrigerator and toilet into one of these things...

Anyway, I was pretty exhausted after this morning. I haven't put my back into anything in a long time! It was off to bed early.