August Started with a Flood

Today, we welcomed August alongside some flooding that happened here. It was raining intensely all morning. I had woken up around 9:30am but I wanted to sleep for another half an hour, thinking my alarm at 10am would wake me. Normally, I would get up earlier but last night I couldn't sleep until after 2am and so I had set my alarm to 10 in the morning. That half hour of extra sleep somehow turned into two more hours of sleep because the alarm didn't go off - this is something that happens from time to time with this particular phone.

It was just before noon when some guests at the guesthouse came by to my door wearing bathing suits. They told me they were ready to help me evacuate my room. Everybody was taking their belongings and going up to the breakfast area by the front office of the guesthouse. That's the highest structure here and that's where everyone remained until about a few hours ago when the rain was coming down much slower.

I told the guests that I didn't want to abandon my room just yet. Soon afterwards, a very worried Haruna showed up at my door urging me to take my laptop and leave my room immediately. Again, I stated that I wanted to see how things turned out before rushing out of my room.

At that time, the water levels had risen up so that only two steps could be seen from my front deck. My room is higher than the other rooms here and so I thought I had a chance to stay here before swimming to the front of the guesthouse. I told myself that if the water levels continued to rise and rose past the second last step, I would start preparing my bags to leave. I had breakfast and observed the flooded environment. Haruna was going back and forth between the front and her room as she brought everything she thought she had to save to higher ground. Eventually, she came to my room and we had lunch.

The ducks at Pi Ning's Rasta Chill Bar could be seen swimming gracefully in the floodwater. Obviously, they weren't as affected by this as Pi Ning himself whose bar rests on ground level. There's going to be a lot to clean up in the upcoming days.

Our neighbour on the other side has ducks and cows. The cows were transported to a safer area while some of the ducks swam around the newly formed lake that encompassed all of the properties around here.

Panda made an appearance as well. Apparently, she came to check up on us but that's as close as she could come. It was delightful to see her in a gray and brown atmosphere of flood and rain. She offered some relief from the natural disaster unfolding before our eyes.

The rain actually stopped about an hour ago and that's around the time I turned my computer on for the first time today. It was about 5pm when the rain totally stopped, having slowed down to a spray for the half hour before that. Most of the travellers at the guesthouse had returned to their rooms while it was still sprinkling because the water levels had started to decrease as well. In fact, I witnessed the appearance of the 3rd and 4th steps on my deck before the rain stopped. And now, the 7th step is also visible. Hopefully, all the water clears out by tonight but I saw that more rain was expected to fall after dark too.