Rain!

The rains have started!  Probably not the real monsoon yet, but enough in the last two days to make a big mess of all our roads, play areas and walking between the two hostels and out to the school.  Today, we finally loaded a big bunch of kids into the vans and drove them to the school. Anyone who was out at the wrong moment really got soaked.  Tonight we have a load of laundry still strung all over our room, that failed to dry--it has been inside hanging since early this morning.  Lots of moisture in the air!

Yesterday, we had a group of the older boys that went out to work on the big piles of sand that were dumped on Saturday, to try and reduce some of our lake areas.  They were so great as they organized themselves, carrying loads on their heads, and tossing the wet, heavy sands into the low spots.  The tool they use to toss the sand is like a large, short-handled hoe, and it is quite effective when used appropriately.  The boys worked for a couple of hours and the five or six mountains, were reduced to flatland.  This was all in the rain.  Next, the little boys were climbing out windows (not literally, but nearly so!) so they finally came out in the downpour and played on the playground.  They were such a mess, when it was all over, but I think the housemothers would not have kept their sanity without having them out for a while. Big problem with these rainy day weekends, is finding creative things for 140 squirrels to do!

It will be a new experience to observe when the day after day rains begin.  The average rainfall is 51" with about 40" of those in the fall monsoon (September through December), so we all may be web-footed by the time it's over.  Our wells (three of them) are so low, it's a bit scary. While we don't drink the well water yet (we're working on a reverse osmosis plant right now) it would be very bad not to be able to shower or flush a toilet!  We have noticed a change of the bugs that we are seeing in abundance, a lack of flies, louder frogs, and many more mosquitoes. 

One of our number (Amy Kirby -- doctors wife) had a funny experience (only in India is this funny).  They live in what we call the DLH (darling little house.)  It is cute looking, but is not very big, so they are tight with Karl and Amy, and their three little children.  They have had a lot of things not working quite right in the DLH--the toilet (American), the toilet (Indian), the electrical outlets (they burn everything up), the bedroom door handle (Karl had to break down the door the other day to get out), and several coconut trees that had not been picked and were dropping their heavy loads, barely missing the children!  They also came home on Saturday from celebrating Karl's birthday with a day out and discovered they had no water!  They had been at the beach surfing, so finally the parents came to our place to shower and get the sand off.  They are the best sports I have ever met about many difficult things!  The other day, however, took the cake.  Amy was in using the Indian toilet (the squatter we call them), and they had a drip of water that couldn't be stopped, and it made everything very wet. Her foot slipped and went down the hole of the squatter--a long ways!!  Luckily she didn't break an ankle, which surely could have happened.  Today in the rain, there were four workers over trying to solve the problems (they had all been there before), but Ron was assured tonight that they had a working American toilet, among other amenities.  I haven't talked to Amy yet!