When it rains...

Sunday, June 19, 2011

...it pours. Literally.

On Tuesday, Alicia, Justin, and I spent the day in Wanyama meeting with various Federation and community members in order to get a better picture of the current health situation. In between meetings we took a tour of the area. Wanyama, one of Jinja's many informal settlements, is built on earth and swamps. A light rain from the previous few days had left puddles between houses, toilets, and in the clogged, crude drainage ditches. Our guides told us time and again how a bad rain in their area turned an already unstable condition into complete chaos. Trash from informal trash heaps (or that had just been strewn on the ground) would wash into homes or fill the drains, and rainwater would wash through the public toilets and washrooms bringing dirt and disease wherever it went.

As we were making our way to leave, Patrick, our counterpart in the Federation, was urging us to hurry before the impending storm reached us. The clouds overhead looked no different than the clouds that frequently passed us by (and never brought rain), so I took my time saying goodbye to the people we had just met. I caught up with Patrick and the others and we crossed the road to wait for a matatu, or taxi bus. The matatus only stop if they have open seats, and apparently we were trying to hail one at rush hour, as none of them attempted to stop for us. After a few minutes of waiting it started to sprinkle - not a light sprinkle like I'm used to in California and even New York, but raindrops the size of quarters. Justin, being more prepared than the rest of us, offered me a jacket and Alicia a rain poncho. In another minute we were in the middle of a full on downpour, and we quickly had to abandon our plan of waiting for the taxi and head back to the settlement. We took shelter under a small structure at the front of town that was basically four wooden posts and a metal roof, where about 20 other people had already squeezed under, hoping to wait out the storm. The structure was on the edge of the main drain for the settlement, and we were amazed to see how in a few minutes the drain was full with a foot of water and mud that was quickly coursing by. In another few minutes, the rushing water had taken out a small, dirt walkway that had been for people to cross over the drain. After about 15 minutes of waiting and watching, we saw a bus stop by the road, heading in the direction that we needed. We crossed quickly and hopped on.

An hour later, drenched and splattered with mud, we were back at home. I prepared water to take a warm "shower," looking forward to scraping off the mud and putting on dry clothes, my mind still in Wanyama with the people, their homes, and the unrelenting floods.