i'm at work. At five o'clock on a saturday. Trying to figure out when i became such a geek.

It finally stopped raining. If you watched the news and heard anything about flooding in Bangladesh and India.. i was in the India part. It was so weird because I see that footage every year and this year, i was IN those shots.

It wasn't actually that bad where I live, and the monsoon was still unlike anything i've ever experienced. As it was, trains stopped, phones were out, electricity didn�t work, whole neighborhoods were flooded.

I'd hold my breath as my rickshaw approached a low-lying area filled with murky water. It seemed the drivers thought they were in magical Bond cars that were suddenly going to turn into boats as we plunged into newly-formed lakes anywhere from one to four feet deep. Sometimes it would be fine, but half the time we'd just get stuck and then the driver would push us out... or not.

A couple of times I had to get out and slosh through the water to the other side (as visions of leptospirosis danced in my head). SO disgusting, i really can't tell you. My greatest nightmare is wading through murky, sewer-y water. My skin is crawling as i write this. egh.

[oh! I read a funny story about how some street urchins were making money by standing in the flooded parts of roads: drivers saw the kids standing there with water just above their ankles. So they figured their cars could take it and drove in... only to discover that the kids were standing on stools and the water was actually super deep! Then the kids made 100 rupees each pushing the cars out of the water. Funny things happen here.]

Oh monsoon... rain was a perfectly reasonable reason to miss work (snow days! but with rain). In another part of the state it was only moderately bad... and they had FOUR FEET of water in their houses and schools. It was really the worst in the north where everyone was stranded on their roofs and they were using boats to get around.

I honestly don't know how people survive. There doesn't seem to be a balance. There is either:
not enough rain = drought = failed crops = debt, starvation, disease, death.
OR
way too much rain = floods = failed crops, lost homes = debt, washed away houses, starvation, waterborne disease, death.

But the worst part is it's not just that weather gods like avenging India; If there was better infrastructure and preparation, the monsoons would be a chance to harvest water, fill up water reservoirs, and prepare for years of drought. As it is, it's just this massive disaster.... that happens almost every year.

Clearly something missing here. Maybe... monsoon preparation?

and this concludes the lecture section of this entry. Like i said: geek. I'm such a geek.

5:30 pm - 2004-08-28