A Freak Hail Storm

If you read my entry below, you´ll know that Wednesday night I felt sick through most of the night due to some unknown cause. Just when I was looking forward to a restful sleep Thursday night, things got really interesting.

At about 6pm, just before sundown, extremely dark clouds set in over Horqueta. I´ve become used to the sudden tropical rains that come on quickly and strong, then leave just as quick as they came but this one looked different. I took all my laundry off the line and brought my dog inside my house. 10 min later it began to rain. I laid on my bed and settled into an episode of Lost on my computer and thought "a raining evening is just what i want actually" A few minutes later I heard what sounded like rocks being thrown on my roof. I thought "those little %&%$$ better not be throwing rocks on my roof again" referring to my bratty neighbor kids who like to get attention anyway they can. At first it sounded like pebbles but soon it sounded like huge rocks and i realized they weren´t rocks, it was hail. It was hail the size of tennis balls, some the size of softballs and they were coming down hard! Lucy, my dog was freaking out and dove for cover under my bed. I heard my neighbors screaming because they actually don´t even have a roof, they have a plastic tarp covering their little wooden house that resembles more of a tool shed than a house. I can´t imagine what the storm felt like from their point of view. I thought I was in a safe place until chunks of my roof came falling down and the huge ice balls were covering my floor. As the water flooded my floors, i quickly put my computer away and moved my bed where it wouldn´t get soaked. I watched in horror as more and more ice balls came crashing through my roof. I didn´t know where to stand so i wouldn´t get hit, so i stood in my doorway and covered my head. I got a text message from Mirtha my host mom telling me to come over to their house, they were worried about me and their roof is a lot stronger than mine. Mine is made of a cheap almost cardboard/plastic-like material and my host family´s is metal. I put a rain jacked on and ran over to their house and waited it out. It only lasted 5 min in total but it was scary! Afterwards however, everyone ran outside to pick up the ice balls. Paraguayans had never seen anything like this before, and some even called them ice from heaven and were convinced you should eat it. I said no thanks, and went back to my house to see what heaven´s ice had done to my house.

I have 5 holes in total about the size of large potatoes. Five holes isn´t a lot but my house is so tiny, it kind of looks like a strainer now. I can now see the stars at night and have a sun roof during the day. I but buckets under them when it rains and i´m waiting out an immediate fix because the city is going to supply the materials for the repairs since so many people´s roofs were damaged. I´m impressed the city is responding this way but won´t be surprised if they don´t follow through. I will need 5 new sheets of the plastic cardboard stuff and that´s more than a little over my budget this month. I´ve already replaced a couple sheets once when i climbed up there to look at the stars, not realizing no one does that in Paraguay because the roofs can´t handle it!

Nothing was damaged except for the AC adapter to my computer, which I hope to replace this week when I go to Ciudad del Este-electronics capital of South America, on the border of Brazil. You can supposedly buy anything there for really cheap but you have to be careful it´s legit. After I get my adapter I´m going to hop over the border to check out the waterfalls called Iguazu. I hope to post pictures of that soon after, i hear they are beautiful. In the meantime, if it rains I will have a waterfall in my house!

To make the situation more interesting, the storm caused the electricity and water to go out in the entire norhern region of Paraguay. Now, electricity and water go out frequently and I´m used to that but this time they stayed out for over 30 hours. From Thursday evening to Saturday mid day, I learned how to be very good at conserving water, how to stand in line at my neighbors house, while the entire street heaved buckets of water out of their well and hauled them to their homes. I learned to collect water in buckets from the rain (since the well water looked a little dirty to me) I was still able to heat water on my gas stove to bucket bathe in and to cook with. I ate my food out of the pot so as not to create more dishes that needed to be washed with my limited water supply. I flushed my toilet by pouring used dishwater down it and made handwashing stations out of 2 liter bottles turned upside down and hung up by string.

At 6pm, the neighborhood went completely dark and silent and peole went to bed by 8pm since there was no light, no TV or music. I read and journaled by candlelight and played my guitar and watched the sky through the holes in my roof and wondered when the water and electricity would come back. I would play games with myself and count down from 10 and then say .....and NOW!......and NOW! But that grew old fast. My cell phone battery died so I couldn´t even text message other volunteers to say things like "do YOU have water yet?" or (sarcastically) "good thing i have home owners insurance" haha. I ate everything in my fridge that would go bad, which wasn´t much. I had good, quality thinking time and i grew stinkier and stinkier without a real shower.

Saturday I went for a 12 mile run, as part of my marathon training and gracias a Dios the water was back on when i got back. If it wasn´t, i´m sure my neighbors would have moved if they smelled me. The electricty was back too and everyone was smiling and in high spirits in the streets. I don´t think people even cared about the holes in their roofs anymore, there was running water and power. I hope there´s not another storm like that in the next 8 1/2 months but it was a learning experience and will always make a great story. It will also always make me appreciate strong roofs, gas stoves, home owner´s insurance, long burning candles and will keep me from ever complaining if i suffer through a 10 min power outage back home. :)