Wednesday, August 24, 2005


This whole phenomenon of flooding is really interesting to me. I've definitely never experienced anything like it. So my Tuesday class that I've been teaching is located about 15-20 feet from what used to be the river bank. We used to drive up to here on motor bikes and everything was fine. Well since the wet season got fully underway, the banks have burst and now we have to park the motorbike at a school about a mile away, and go by boat to the house that we teach English in. It was surreal, boating down the road that I've been down so many times, passing children floating on various things between houses. This is a picture of the house where we teach and some of our students. You can see that the flood waters are actually completely under the house, there's the boat that we used in the background. The oddest thing about this, is that this is just incredibly normal to everyone who lives here. It's true that their way of life has adapted to these conditions, but I think it just highlights another form of their poverty. It's sad that having a river flowing through your house has had to become normal, because you can't afford to buy land anywhere else. Having the water there provides a load of it's own problems, let alone the inconvenience, but it's incredibly difficult to maintain any sort of hygiene when your constantly wet. But, I guess that poverty can seem just normal sometimes.

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