The Big Storm

Last month I was shopping in Thohoyandou when it began raining really hard.  I didn't bring an umbrella and ran to the bus area, found my bus and got on.  I was soaked and there were no seats.  I was standing in the middle of the bus when 3 young boys called to me.  They were sitting in 3 seats and squashed together so I could sit with them.  They called me by name so I figured out they were from Lukalo.  It was so very nice of them to make room for me and I am sure it was not all that comfortable for them.  I really appreciated their kindness as I did not want to have to stand for 54 KM after walking around town all day.  And the trip home can take a long time because of the number of stops the buses around here have to make.  The other morning it took 1 3/4 hours to get to Thohoyandou by bus.

As we got closer to the village we could see roofs blown off of houses and when we reached the village their was a great deal of mud that had come down the slope across the road.  in the dusk I could see the sign for the primary school was blown over and a huge branch had fallen from a big tree near the bus stop.  As I walked towards my house I could hear hammering.  People were trying to fix their homes and protect their interiors from the rain.  My room was fine but the main house had great deal of water in it as did the house of the grandmother of my host family's children and many other homes in the area.  There were at least 10 houses which had the roofs blown off and one, in which people were gathered to drink the local home brew, had a tree limb fall on it.  Some of those people were hurt but all survived.

The roof blew off the Lukalo Primary School kitchen

A roof lying in a field far from any house

Many large tree limbs had fallen down and men hatcheted away at them for days following the storm.  Few, if any, chainsaws here.

I was told that a tornado came through town and that it had hailed.  They had to struggle to figure out how to tell me in English about the hail.  I asked if anyone saw a tornado and no one said they did but they said they heard a loud noise and made a sound like I would expect from one.  Tornadoes are very uncommon in this area as I discovered from watching the news that night.  I had to ask the children to turn the news back on as they switched channels to see some soap opera or something or other.  Soap operas are very popular here in South Africa and many people of all ages watch them.  Some of the soap operas have characters that speak in different languages which is one educationally redeeming quality of this past-time.