i woke up in the wee hours of tuesday morning to the sound of a waterfall outside my window. it was raining uncontrollably. i fought desperately to get back to sleep because i would soon have to wake up for work. fortunately enough, though i never got back to sleep, the rain was so persistent my teachers called to say not to bother coming to school. no current. thinking i had my little travel alarm radio to keep me alerted on the weather conditions, i ran to find it and turned it on, to iriefm, only to find out 4 minutes later, my batteries had died. awesome. to boot, my house began flooding from everywhere, mainly from the ceiling, windows and doorways. needless to say i spent majority of my time mopping.

the blackout continued for what would be a week, though none of us ever knew that beforehand. the rain poured non-stop, and it wasn’t mere little raindrops, but rather buckets followed with high speed winds. two of my coconut trees lost their tops; blown right off. the kids scavenged the remaining coconuts and hid them under the house. the zinc from my elaborate water catchment setup blew right off and twisted itself up in the process. the intrusion of water within the house only worsened as the rain kept on. the day light hours were spent mopping, reading, watching wind blow, watching water pour from the sky, drawing, taking pictures and video of the rain and wind, talking on the phone with volunteers and my neighbors, running up/down the hill when the rain would ease up a bit, hanging out at curtis’ shop with my neighbors, … as soon as night fell, the entire place became bathed in darkness. imagine not being able to see your hand, much less anything else, especially with the rain and wind, the scene was more that of a spooky pirate movie than anything. what killed me was monday, on my way home, i had thought for a second of buying candles in sav, but as i had just reached, the weather was beginning to turn ugly and i wanted to head home before i found myself caught in the storm. so there i sat, all week, in total darkness and silence. i tried to cook by the light of my dying cell phone and headlamp. luckily, i live right up the mountain from the seaford town heart trust centre and they happen to have a generator… so, for long-term power outages, they will, from time-to-time, switch the generator on and let neighbors come charge their phones. they are lifesavers.

since i hadn’t stopped at the store, my food supply was also running thin. i was left to my creativity near the end. 1/5 a bag of veggie chunks, a can of tomato sauce, one piece of garlic and a 1/3 of an onion. crafty. i somehow survived and though my phone was on the verge of death and zero credit. thanks to melissa for topping me up!! i also reread thoreau, which i hadn’t read since high school, and i related so much more with his words and experience. i felt it ten-fold, because i have been living it. it was a great revelation of sorts. i heard stories from neighbors about massive flooding island-wide, people dying from the flooding or the winds, roads being overtaken with water and most of which were eroded to nothing because of the massive amounts of water. it was not until i witnessed some of this firsthand, one, en route to montego bay, and the other en route to sav, that i believed. on a food run to montego bay, the roads were either washed away to nothing, flooded by a foot or so of running water, or closed off. houses and buildings flooded. once dried up streams now resembled rushing rapids. i had heard rumors of a two-story house in anchovy flooded to the second story, but this i could hardly believe… till i saw it with my own two eyes. sure enough, a two-story house flooded to the second story; the entire thing engulfed in water, granted, it was in a very low valley. what a sight to witness though. trees and bamboo ripped out from the earth and strewn across the roads.

it was not until monday night that our current came back. i had left my kitchen light on so i would see when the current had come back, as i had unplugged the fridge from monday. it was around 6pm and i had just gotten home from school. i was cooking in the kitchen when suddenly a FLASH of light appeared. i started dancing with glee, when i turned to my backdoor to see asha bent over laughing at me. as soon as i explained the situation to her, she darted to her yard to see if they had current. she came back, head hanging low and made me turn on all the lights to prove to cudjoe, janeal and tafari that i had power. before i knew it my kitchen was full of children, asha, janeal, kiera, rat rat and tafi; all dancing with glee and singing.   it was then i learned that i had been the last volunteer to regain current. everyone else had had power from days before. so it goes. i hear there is another storm on it’s way and i just hope it’s nothing like this. i cannot manage another week of incessant rain, high winds, flooding and blackouts.