Rainy season started with a bang. A bang and an electrocution. The first big storm we encountered in the rainy season caught us as Rob and I were hitching our way from Tukombo to Nkhata Bay to get to my place. We got stuck less than half way, in Chintheche. Luckily, a fellow Tonga PCV, Melissa, lives ten minutes away with running water and electricity. After three weeks of traveling we were pretty spent and just happy to cook quickly on her hot plate, curl up with a movie, and pass out on her couch cushions on the floor.
The real storm started with a trickle of rain about half way through the movie (Stardust, in case you were wondering. P.S. the guy who wrote the book that movie is based on, Neil Gaiman, AWESOME! Just finished a book of his short stories, “Fragile Things,” highly recommend it. He’s a refreshingly creative writer. He thinks differently.) By the time we were hit the floor we had to yell at each other to be heard over the rain on the metal roof. I literally have never heard thunder that loud nor felt it so strong. The walls were shaking and the lightening outside lit up the house inside like it was daytime, but in strobe light form. Luckily, we were too exhausted to be kept up by it for too long. A few hours of sleep later all three of us were woken up by a particularly loud clap of thunder. After the initial startle, Rob and I started to lie back down on our respective foam squares of cushions to return to blissful sleep, but it was not to be so. I know pretty much nothing about how lightening or electricity works, whenever we talked about it in physics class I would turn of my ears and sing “la la la!” in my head. So I’m not sure how it happened but a second clap of thunder brought with it a flash of lightening (which, looking back on the experience, I don’t remember seeing) that either hit the roof and traveled through the walls and the cement floor or hit the electricity pole and came through the socket (which was not turned off and still had the computer charger stuck in it, the end of which was sitting on the floor). Whatever happened, Rob and I both got the shock of our lives.
My whole body felt the force of the electrocution, but I was half sitting up at the time, and the lingering feeling, what I remember most vividly, was the shock in my chest. If you’ve ever been zapped a little by electricity, you know the feeling of the vibration on the inside of your fingers. Like you’ve accidently touched a turned-on stove, if the stove was vibrating like those foot massager machines you can pay 25 cents for at the Zoo or Six Flags. That’s what it was like, except times maybe 10, and it was my heart touching the stove. But I also remember thinking that it really wasn’t that bad when it was over. I’m pretty sure the shock of the shock kept us both feeling ok enough to get over it quickly. But we were really shaken. The worst part, the WORST part, was thinking that there was nowhere to go to hide from the storm, that if we got electrocuted again, there was nothing we could do about it. We were completely at the mercy of the storm. And, if anything were to happen, we’d be completely helpless to do anything. If we called PC for help, they wouldn’t be able to hear us over the storm, and there’s no way transport could go anywhere in that weather. Melissa’s neighbors speak English, but so what? We’d still be competing with the storm and we’d still be screwed.
Of course, we were fine. Rob and I moved to higher ground and after being thoroughly freaked out for a while, jumping at every clap of thunder and counting the seconds obsessively between thunder and lightning, we eventually slept again. But it was a rude awakening to the helpless human condition up against the forces of nature.
Wow. -Mac
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