Let me preface this blog by saying I am not superstitious. The whole idea really strikes me as ridiculous. Black cats, stepping on cracks, breaking mirrors and Friday the 13th – whatever. Yet, my Friday the 13th turned out to be a real nightmare this year. Read on, if you dare!
The day was great. I prepped for the charla I give on Saturdays, hung out with two of my friends, made banana pancakes and even figured out how to finish the project I’m helping finish for my friend who left me in charge of an important project. That was until the evening when I came home.
Now, it’s summer here and summer means rain, heavy rains. I had just gotten home and it was around 8:30. Then the rain started and came down hard. I was trying to do my Zumba workout which I couldn’t even hear due to how loud the rain was pounding on my aluminum roof. Doing some perfectly performed Samba-like move, I danced to the side and noticed my back room was flooded. I paused my video and ran to check for a leak from the roof. Nope, nada. Instead what I saw was Hollywood-esque special effects of water surging in from under the wall via the soil. Really?! I have the back room papered in an effort to train my dog, so I thought, “OK, more paper!” I laid down a few more sheets of newspaper and tried to continue with my workout. Yah, it was like that saying, “Trying to put a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.” In a few seconds the sheets of newspaper were being carried away by the running water. I panicked – my house was quickly filling with water and I was short a couple sand bags.
Having to do something to save my few precious possessions, I began getting all my things off the ground. Suitcases and pack on chairs and tables, guitar on the book shelf, colchonetas suspended between two chairs and external hard drive up on the table and off the floor. Knowing that my belongings were safe, I called my land lady. The noise from the rain was so loud she couldn’t even hear me. I was just yelling “Hay agua en la casa!”
She hurried over and assessed the situation. Then she disappeared as I was fretting over the rising water. Turns out she was outside moving the old terra cotta roof tiles away from the outside wall of my house, in the tropical torrential downpour. Having to act like I was trying to help I quickly changed out of my New Balance and grabbed my flip flops. It was classic: drenched, throwing the tiles aside while trying to not break them and pleading with God that any creatures hadn’t decided to take refuge there we were in the rain just trying to save our house. (Mine in the meantime and hers in another year.) After all the tiles were moved my landlady found a hoe and started making a trench for so that the water had somewhere to flow to, besides under the bricks and into my house. All that hard work resolved the issue of the water entering the house.
All that was left to do was deal with the water that had already made its way into the house. My bedroom, kitchen and living room were all under a couple inches of water (and mud). But, before I continue my story I have to explain that my house is sunken. As in you have to step down upon entering. In many homes someone could just take the broom and push the water out the front door. Well, not in my house. My landlady and I set to work with my five gallon bucket, a small pail and a Gladware container, scooping water and filling the bucket, team lifting it to dump outside and starting all over again. I’d say we filled and dumped it about fifteen times (around 75 gallons of water). My landlady mopped up what little was left and we called it a night after about a two hour ordeal.
So, that was the story. Not let me point out a few things that would have made the situation a lot worse. 1) Thank God I was home when this happened. Had I not been here, or had left for the weekend, my stuff would have been ruined and no one would have found out until later. Being here I was able to save all my stuff. 2) Thank God Honduran homes don’t have carpet. It would be ruined and clean up that much harder. 3) Thank God there was light. Many times during the heavy rains the power goes out. Last night the power had actually gone out for about 15 min. and when that happens there’s no saying it won’t happen again. Doing all that clean up by candle light would have been just perfect. 4) Thank God my landlady lives about 100 ft. away. Otherwise, I don’t know who I would have called and who would have bothered to come so quickly.
Anyway, that was my event for Friday the 13th. Below is the video I took post clean up so everyone could check out the aftermath.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_hGkhxxUIg&feature=channel_video_title
Hasta la proxima vez…
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