Running amok

Went to the track today at the kids school, not sure what I would find. There was a huge storm yesterday evening in our area of Lusaka. Just to set the scene....

...we were relaxing at home. Tennis and swimming in the morning, eggy bread for brunch followed by lego building in the afternoon. We had realised vaguely that something was awry with the weather. It has been humid. A few drops of rain had fallen at soccer on Saturday. Nothing unusual in much of the world, except that the seasons are defined differently here. Zambia has 3: hot, hot and rainy and cool (which actually is the 'hot, but not as hot as the hot season, season'). It does NOT rain in the hot or cool seasons.

The weather in Lusaka is pretty temperate by most people's standards. Never too hot, nor too cold, nor too rainy or windy. When people complain here about the weather, I feel like I'm back in England. Comments like, 'it's so hot today' when it's 30 odd degrees. Having lived in Greece and on the East Coast of the USA - I know what proper hot feels like. And I have harped on and on about the great weather here: no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no snow/ice storms...

Until last night. At some point, we realised a storm was coming. And then suddenly, the wind started. Hailstones almost the size of golf balls fell. The wind whipped up some more. Torrential rain. More and more squalling rotational wind.

The children, raised in a tornado and hurricane area, knew what to do and we sat it out in the most internal structure of the house: the stairwell. Our house is a European concrete structure rather than a USA matchstick and plastic house, so we knew we were 'safe' but we didn't know where the water would come in or if something would be hurled through the window.

At some point, water was pouring down the stairs. There had been so much rain, it came in through the window frames and flooded parts of the upper floor. But the roof and windows held out. Our neighbours were not so lucky: one of their windows had imploded with shards of glass flying across the room: they had also been sensible enough to move into a safe room.

Unlike in the US or Europe, we had no warning of the strength of this storm, there is not a functioning emergency services department and there was no information about what the wider impact of this storm has been. Many people here live in concrete block huts with tin roofs and without electricity. If it was a frightening experience for us, it must have been terrifying for the average Zambian. But equally, they live with the elements all the time. We only notice the extremes....