It is rainy season here in Ethiopia. That means it rains. Every day.
This year has had exceptionally heavy rain though. There is flooding in Nazaret, and many people have been displaced because of it. When we drove out to Awash, there were sections of the landscape that were under water.. and shouldn't have been.
Today, it rained some more. Surprise!
It was an incredible downpour. We could hardly see out of the van windows the rain was coming down so hard! Plus, the defrost function doesn't work in most vehicles here. Usually, this isn't really an issue since it never freezes. But when it rains... the windshield does get rather foggy.
So, we could hardly see.
The traffic was stalled and slow because no one else could see either. Or because people in small cars had decided to brave the small lakes that were forming at the bottoms of hills and any flat spaces, and had flooded their engines with water. Not gonna get that moving any time soon! But of course, they were stuck in their vehicles, with water rising to the bottoms of the doors, and splashing right over them whenever any larger vehicle drove past.
Even our van got completely submerged in a passing spray as another van went speeding past us. And we were on the edge of the puddle!
There are many many hills here in Addis, and the water was running downhill so fast that it couldn't even get into the sewers. Or if it could, it had overloaded their capacity and was merely shooting straight up out of the sewer covers farther down the road.
So what with bad visibility, stalled vehicles blocking the road, and an over anxiety of every other driver on the road to get to where they were going without getting flooded.... it was a rather crazy drive home.
O_o
This year has had exceptionally heavy rain though. There is flooding in Nazaret, and many people have been displaced because of it. When we drove out to Awash, there were sections of the landscape that were under water.. and shouldn't have been.
Today, it rained some more. Surprise!
It was an incredible downpour. We could hardly see out of the van windows the rain was coming down so hard! Plus, the defrost function doesn't work in most vehicles here. Usually, this isn't really an issue since it never freezes. But when it rains... the windshield does get rather foggy.
So, we could hardly see.
The traffic was stalled and slow because no one else could see either. Or because people in small cars had decided to brave the small lakes that were forming at the bottoms of hills and any flat spaces, and had flooded their engines with water. Not gonna get that moving any time soon! But of course, they were stuck in their vehicles, with water rising to the bottoms of the doors, and splashing right over them whenever any larger vehicle drove past.
Even our van got completely submerged in a passing spray as another van went speeding past us. And we were on the edge of the puddle!
There are many many hills here in Addis, and the water was running downhill so fast that it couldn't even get into the sewers. Or if it could, it had overloaded their capacity and was merely shooting straight up out of the sewer covers farther down the road.
So what with bad visibility, stalled vehicles blocking the road, and an over anxiety of every other driver on the road to get to where they were going without getting flooded.... it was a rather crazy drive home.
O_o
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