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Welcome to Rainy Season

Posted on Tuesday, December 11, 2018

There’s no change of the seasons here in the jungle. No leaves changing into beautiful shades of yellow and orange and red as the temperatures cool. No budding of flowers and trees, filling the warming air with the aromas of spring. And definitely no snow. There’s just the rainy season, and the not so rainy season. Now that doesn’t mean that during the rainy season it rains all day, every day. In fact, it doesn’t even rain every day. It comes more in spurts.

But when it rains, it pours. Like a good midwestern thunderstorm kind of pour. The ones that force you to drive a little slower cause you can’t see out the windshield or make you think the roof is going to cave in as the rain pounds against it.

And let’s just say they drainage systems here are not built to support that kind of rain.  

Now, a little context before I begin. First important detail - I live on a street that is under construction. Has been for the last two months. Probably will be for the next two months. Time is relative when it’s all done by hand. Second, we also live on the street where the water from all the other streets in town ends up. There is a slight gradient as the town slopes down toward the river and we live more or less at the bottom of that gradient. One of the reasons they are redoing the street is to improve the water drainage. The trenches next to the road that transports the water to the river are now deeper and wider than before. But this is the Amazon. And it’s the rainy season. Not sure deeper and wider are gonna cut it. Third, our street slants to the left and ends at the river. We live close to the river meaning we get literally all the water on a normal day coming from the rest of the city.

Commencing with the story. We woke up early one morning to meet up with an NGO we have been helping with. I could tell it had been raining recently as the grass and cement was wet and the grey clouds hung low over the mountains, blocking their view from my window. But I wasn’t too concerned. We do live in the Amazon after all. I had just finished getting ready and sat down to eat my breakfast, a bowl of fresh fruit, yogurt and granola, when it started to rain again. Each minute with increasing intensity.

Still not too concerned, I finished my breakfast, listening to the rain collide with the metal roofs that protect each home. The sound was intense. Perhaps louder than normal. But it’s just water, right? I really didn’t want to walk to our meeting point in the rain, but we could always take a moto (like a three-wheeled motorcycle with a covered spot on the back for two people to ride, three if you squeeze).

Donning my rain jacket and already wearing my water-resistant hiking pants, we headed out. Our host family had already warned us that the street was flooding. But how bad could it be? It’s just a little rain.  

Then we opened the front door.

We normally walk out the door and to the left, but today, that was not going to happen. Unless we wanted to walk through who knows how many inches of dirty, muddy water. You see, the street was an actual river. And those trenches that were supposed to take the water to the river, yeah, they weren’t cutting it. Not today. Not even close. Why did they redo the road again? That’s what I really wanted to know.

Anyway, the sidewalk and trench area right outside the car port door had not been paved yet and were slightly lower than the already paved portion of the sidewalk. This created the perfect place for the water flowing down the street to accumulate and pool before continuing its journey to the river. There was no way across it without venturing through the dirty water flowing over a pothole-filled dirt path with a three-foot trench on one side. Count me out.

That meant going out the main entrance, going to the right, walking about a block, turning to the right, and walking another block before we could even hope to find a moto. Keep in mind it is still pouring.

Flipping up our hoods, we decide to make the journey. Within seconds we were soaked, but too amazed at the quantity of water flowing down the street and off people’s roofs to take note. Considering the situation, there was a lot of laughter happening as we contemplated the situation and neared the end of the block.

That’s when we saw surprise number two - the even larger river flowing down the adjoining street, cascading over the large pieces of broken cement from the torn-up street marking the beginning of the construction. We were trapped with no way off our street.

With no other option other than to turn around, we did. With the rain intensity increasing and the water level on the street still rising, turning even more brown as the rain cleaned the streets, we headed home. The water would soon be overflowing onto the sidewalk where we were walking.

Luckily, we made it home before this happened. We stood watching out the door as it continued to rain harder, laughing as motos drove though the flooded intersection next to our house, some drivers, who were prepared, with their rubber boots on and others, who weren’t so prepared, holding their feet up by their handlebars in order to avoid soaking their feet.

Eventually we wandered up to the second floor of our apartment to get a better view. And what a better view it was! We realized our street wasn’t the only one that was flooded. They all were! There was so much water, those trenches were never going to channel that quantity of water to the river. It had nowhere else to go except onto the street to continue its voyage. The chaos and excitement it created!

We had fun watching all of the things floating down the street (actually it was kind of sad cause you knew it was all going to contaminate the river, but it provided some entertainment) – bags, plastic bottles, glass Gatorade bottles that would shatter at the corner, ice cream wrappers, pineapples, avocados. You name it, it was floating down the street. And I’m not joking about the fruit! We watched a pineapple flow down the road, and an avocado pit role right out of the peel as it rolled down the street and disappeared into the water! Who knew it could be so fun to watch a flooded street!

And just as fast as the waters rose, they fell as the rain subsided. Some took the opportunity to use the abundance of water to wash their sidewalks or their motos. Others simply stood in their doorways watching the action along with us.  

It was quite and adventurous morning and something that I think only happens in the Amazon. Where else does fruit float down the street when it rains? I mean, come on!

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