9/23/02

Woo! My favorite thing, natural disasters! We’re under a tropical storm warning right now. It’s supposed to start at like 12 noon today. All schools are cancelled until further notice, and the Prime Minister closed all government branches and agencies too. Only the police and firefighters are on call.

The storm is headed right now for Barbados, but we’re next, and it should go right over us. I heard a lot of raining and blowing in the night. It’s sunny right now, but mostly overcast, and it’s been raining on and off.

Peace Corps called us all this morning to tell us to stay put, but at our discretion. In other words, we didn’t have to go to work if we didn’t want to. For the people working in the schools, it doesn’t matter since the schools are closed anyways. I went in to work for a bit because it’s right up the street from me. I did some emailing and everyone was watching weatherchannel.com. I also picked up some work to bring home…I’m working for a change!

Wow, as if the tropical storm weren’t enough, there was just a big car accident right in front of the house. We were watching the news, and there was a big crash on the highway. Monique, Benji and I all went and put on our shoes and ran down to the street. One of the transport vans that go all over town had slid and rolled and was on its side in the road. What pass for buses here are 12-passenger vans.  Their trademark is blaring music. The streets are pretty empty now because of the storm, which was lucky.  Apparently there were two guys plus the driver in the van, and several guys standing by the side of the road. The guys on the side of the road said the van came down the road all swervy.  Bald tires are more common than not here, and that in combination with the slippery road and a curve made the van tip. The guys by the side of the road got thrown into the gutter (a cement ditch, about three feet wide and three feet deep full of nasty water and garbage) and the grass on the other side.  By the time we got there, everyone had gotten out of the van and they were pulling the guys out of the gutter.  The crash had broken all the windows in the van, but the music was still blaring.  No one appeared to be severely injured, but there was blood all over the guys.  One of the guys that they pulled out of the gutter had a gash on his shin so deep you could see the bone.  He looked to be hurt the worst.  Luckily right then it wasn’t raining.  As we got back to the house we could hear the ambulance coming.  Lucky for these guys the hospital isn’t closed for the storm!  Like any situation like that, most of the people who stopped their cars or ran down there were just there to gawk.  A few were helping out.  I think I heard that Peace Corps had specific regulations about us helping in situations like this. Being that there is significant concern for blood-borne illnesses here, they like us to just not get involved.  But I should check that out.

Anyways, about the storm:  It seems to be kind of a media event.  Imagine that.  I thought those happened only at home.  In any case, nothing up here has been too severe.  I did hear that in Vieux Fort it had rained more and water was covering the highway.  I think there’s more concern for flooding in low-lying areas like that .  Here it’s been rainy off and on, but less than it was a couple weeks ago, and blowy.  From the house we were watching the sea earlier.  Normally the sea is totally still (it’s the ocean that has the waves).  But today the waves were 3 or 4 feet tall.  We were watching them break.  Monique and Ben could tell that the water had come way inland. It will be interesting this week if I go to Choiseul with Selma, to see what the rest of the island is looking like.