This picture was taken on
Sunday morning, after possibly the most crazy flood night I've experienced up to date.
The river started to flood at about 1am on Sunday morning, the sound woke
me and I was not sure what it was since it had been raining quite hard and
non-stop for a long long time. But I was awake and occasionally tried to
look out the window to see if it's getting higher. I could see Ace, the
night guard with his torch, walking around and checking the water levels. I
also packed a little bag with the most essential things and went out to put it
in my car and move my car higher up.
I
heard Aquila (the Boerboel, sleeping in my tent) give a whimper
at some point in answer to a frog croaking. That's when I thought that if
the animals are worried it's probably time for me to also start worrying.
It had flooded before but didn't come as high as where I am currently
parked, so I did not expect it to get that bad.
By 3am it got serious.
Suddenly the water was inside my tent and I had to wake Aquila (the
Boerboel) to get her out of there. . . All the time it's pouring down.
From then on it all happened pretty fast. Ace and Dewald (the camp
manager) came to help me carry everything out of my tent. By this time
the water was suddenly much higher and a lot of things just floated off.
I was standing knee deep in water inside my tent looking around
at these waves washing through, not knowing what to grab and what to let go,
yet feeling strangely calm through it all, knowing Jesus is right there with me in the
storm .
I had to go back and and
pack more things from my caravan cause now it looked like there is no stopping
to the rising of the water. I then went to take shelter in Dewald's house and
found I was not the only one packing even though the other people were much
higher than me. I must say at that stage I was mostly just histerically
laughing at the reality of everything. We were making jokes about packing up and going. The water rose up to the caravan's entrance
and there it stopped and went down. It's amazing how quickly it goes down
again once it's reached the peak.
It was not the end though.
I was just starting to relax a bit when Dewald told me to come quick. A
tree had fallen over on top of my car! Luckily just the branches, so I
moved it out without any damage. But what I was shocked to see then was
that the wind had come up and ripped my whole complete tent of the ground and
all the poles were out. That has never happened before. At
least there was nothing left inside the tent. As if that was not enough
the wind also broke my caravan's window out. That is a bit of a problem
that is going to be hard to fix. And the rain pours in...
From
there I went over to stay at some kind people's house and got dry and tried to have
some sleep. The rain still didn't stop. The rain measured on
Saturday was 160mm. The rain measured for Sunday was 300mm. I
anticipated another flooding.
The water went all the way right up to the little fence you can see on the right.
To my horror I was right.
On Monday morning when I went back, I was faced with the aftermath of a small natural disaster. The previous evening at about 7pm, that river flooded again and
this time went even much higher. The whole campsite had to evacuate.
Everything on my side was in shambles. I was still hopeful that my
seedlings were going to survive, because some were still standing on top of the
braai after the first flood, but when I got back, there was not even a single braai left standing.
The water went into and through my caravan. I am soooo
thankful I was not there to experience that.
Mama Grace came around and
helped me get the caravan floor cleaned of all the mud that washed through it.
Funny how she's always helping me with mud on my floors. Previously
she had to put it on (The Reading Hut floor) and now she had to take it off.
Anyway I am so thankful for that because it made me a bit despondent to
see that and she just took care of it for me in no time. Thank the Lord
for Grace...
The campsite after the storm
Here you can see exactly where the water went through the caravan
