The Rains Came!

I truly am not a blogger because I so often forget to write.  I am a writer.  I write when the feeling comes over me and that really isn't enough for blogging.  Still have not learnt how to  do a lot of things to make the pages interesting :), so please forgive the errors and if you know how to do it, (whatever it may be for a blog page), teach me.  Anyway, I've got something to say and I am ready to blog it.  Read on!
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What a rain!  Yes, it was only ordinary rain according to the Met Office but to those of us who were awakened in the wee hours of Saturday August 11, 2012  by the downpour and the lightning and the thunder, it was a storm!  For those who have been flooded out,  or who lost loved ones, it was a storm!  The roadways covered in water became rivers themselves and thus were impassable.  We human beings saw the force of Mother Nature combined with our penchant for creating and depositing trash in all the wrong places, cause destruction and despair.  We shared the devastation by Face Book, by telephone and cellular.  I  now share with you some photos distributed on Face Book.

Diego Martin Highway between Crystal Stream Avenue and Sierra Leone Rd

Somewhere in Maraval

We walked in tall boots or slippers and with umbrellas or bare-headed, and hollered to our neighbours enquiring as to their well-being.    The storm, no, the rains took the electricity and telephone services eventually and as the water subsided it left mud and a certain numbness for me.  

La Estancia, Diego Martin West

But that is when I saw love in action!  The public services were out in full force (many were there during the rains), directing traffic, taking the phone calls and cries for help, removing the bodies, calling out the backhoes and  directing the workers.  That is when I saw love in action with neighbours forming themselves into work gangs, heading through still swirling waters at times, to check on each other, to begin the clean-up.   My friend and her friends were out with mops, buckets, food and energy to clean homes and give comfort on Day 2.  Day 3 found she and her friends out there again with breakfast and lunch and soap and towels, whatever was and is needed.  Then there is my neighbor who hearing the cry for hamper supplies is today working the neighborhood petitioning for canned goods and other household needs.  That got a couple of us to head to the supermarket where I met a man who was en route to his community centre with ingredients for a full spaghetti and meat  sauce meal.

With another neighbor doing chauffeur duty (I have no vehicle), we spent time dropping in to the homes of friends and especially our elderly friends to see if we were needed.  Guess what?  All had been given a hand by relatives, friends’ grown-up children, and their children’s grown-up friends!  One on hearing that we were going back home to collect supplies even in her turmoil, one woman took the time to give us a few cans to add to the hampers.  So  as I tried to lug a garbage bag full of  other’s  wet, smelly, muddy clothing and  received a hand from the man of Insect Vector Control to do so, I began thinking about love in action; love is action.

There was a bridge here at Gittensdale, Glencoe

This is not my story.  It is our story.  The story of why many of us stay in Trinidad and Tobago swallowing all the sheer nonsense day after day after day because all that sheer nonsense is washed away by the power of love in action:  the hand that touches your shoulder in church as you pray through your tears, the unknown friend who writes a word on Face Book or Twitter or any subscribed social media that tells you you are not alone.  The hope that rises to your breast as you see love in action.  

We often say God is a Trini and this event proved it indeed.  I saw God in us: those persons who without hesitation did their job, without delay came to their neighbours and to strangers’ aid, those persons who said “thank-you but help another, I am okay”.  Thank-you God.