Ok, so maybe it's not THAT exciting...

Now I'm feeling a little sheepish, because come to think of it, my weekend wasn't all THAT exciting. I've been chatting with my dad (I LOVE yahoo messenger!) this evening, and he was asking me what was so exciting that I needed an entire day off to blog about... and I realized that, well, maybe I should hurry up and blog so I don't raise all your expectations TOO high and have you turn off your computers in utter disappointment!

Anyways, so Friday night, Jackie, Annamarie and I all bundled into her little Suzuki (it's like a cute little mini-jeep!) and headed off into the night for a friend's birthday party across town. We're all dressed up (I was even wearing my cute new shoes that I got in Addis!), but on the way out the gate, we had a very typical conversation which precedes any outing in Jb:

"So, which way should we go?"
"Well, have they filled in that ditch along the road that goes between the market and the Ethiopian restaurant?"
"No, I went by yesterday and there was still a car nose down in the mud"
"Ok, so we'll try going around by the gas bottle place"
"Yikes, that guy was driving fast!"
"No, we tried to go through there the other day, too, but the mud was too deep"
"Right, so I guess we'll go around by the goat market and the stadium".
"Exactly, but let's take the tarmac road, because they've got the other road blocked off up to the University"
"Great"
"Oops, watch out for that motorbike!"
20 minutes later on the other side of town (about 4 km away!).
"OK, I was here the other day, and I saw some other cars go through this swamp. You have to go to the right first, then veer around that big tire in the middle of the road and then go to the far left. The mud isn't quite as deep there".
"Oh, wait for that truck to come through first"
"Gack, he's headed right for us!"
"Oh, never mind, he was just trying to stay out of that mudhole"
"Great, now stay on the right side of this mud hole... but don't hit any of the graves on the side of the road!"

Thus went the conversation in the car. All this just to go 5 km for a dinner party!

Anyways, we had a lovely dinner, but just as we were starting to think about going home, it started to rain. And I don't mean a light drizzle. I mean a downpour! To get to the restaurant that we were eating at, you have to cross a little wooden bridge between the parking lot and the restaurant itself. Normally, the bridge just crosses a sandy little creek bed. I've never actually seen any water in it.

However, after about 20 minutes of downpour, the water was literally a raging torrent! The water rose almost 3 meters (and I'm not exaggerating) in 20 minutes. And it was coming fast... carrying all sorts of rubbish with it!

At about 11, the owner of the restaurant came over to us and told us that if we were going to leave, we should go soon, because he wasn't sure if the bridge was going to hold if the water rose much higher!

So off we went, running through the rain and mud into the dark night, over the raging torrent and to the relative safety of the Suzuki.

Then we had to get home. So the conversation went in reverse, with the new considerations of the raging torrent that we had just crossed and all the likely new mud pits and hidden ditches and trenches. How deep is that puddle? No one knows! "Snorkles up!" became our new catch phrase every time we held our breath and dove in... er, I meant drove in.

We actually made it home in quite good time - there were few other cars on the road! No one here goes out in the rain. We wouldn't have, either, except that we were fearing the bridge!

We got to the front gate of our compound, and lo and behold, the dam had burst. Which meant that a ton of sand and rubbish had washed right into our front drive way, resulting in a huge mud pit right in the middle of the drive way. And of course, all that sand completely blocked the gate, as well! So there we were, in the pouring rain, me in my cute new shoes, behind a completely blocked gate, with a couple of guards on the other side, completely helpless to let us in.

What to do? All the shovels were locked away in the shed, and the shed key in a locked key box (which the guards don't have the combination for). We tried calling Wes, as he's normally a bit of a night owl... but he had his phone turned off. So we had no other choice but to call Matt, who is normally sound asleep by 9pm. He was none to happy to be called out of his bed... but we weren't about to sleep in the car in the rain outside the gate!

Anyways, after about 20 minutes of serious digging by the guards and Matt, the gate was ready to be shoved open enough to get the car through. However, in the meantime, Jackie had gotten her little Suzuki stuck in the sand. So I took off my cute new shoes and hopped out into the ankle deep water, hoping to help Jackie get the car out. No such luck. She was mired in the mud pretty good, even though she had it in 4WD!

So we had to get Matt to come and dig the car out, as well!

Anyways, we fared better than our friends on the way home that night. They were driving a hard top Landcruiser (they're bigger than the normal landcruisers that you see at home - they are tough vehicles. They actually have a special "snorkle" so the water doesn't get into the air intake (or something like that... someone explained it to me, and it made sense, but I can't remember what the exact part is called now :) ) It looks something like this, but the one my friends were driving is only about a year old, so looks much better than this one!
My friends who were driving their big landcruiser were actually swept away on the road going to their house! If it weren't for a few huge boulders which prevented the vehicle from being washed down into the river, they would have been in Egypt by now!

The vehicle was pretty much completely submerged and stuck on the rocks. My friends had to escape through the back hatch, as their front doors were under water! So while we were trying to dig ourselves out of the front gate, they were trying to find someone to rescue them. They ended up at some other friends' house at 2am, and didn't make it home until the following morning! Their Landcruiser, unfortunately, is kaput. Their engine has to be sent to Nairobi for repair. Oops. So I'm thankful that we made it home safely. If Jackie's little Suzuki had been swept away, we would for sure be in Egypt by now! This is a photo that I pulled off the Internet of a Suzuki, like Jackie's (for some reason, I can't find a photo of Jackie's car on my computer... and it's way too late to go on a photo safari out there!):
So that was Friday night. All we wanted to do was go out for a nice dinner... but alas... we ended up soaked to the skin and up to our ankles in mud! From now on, I'm taking my gum boots as a fashion accessory when we go out!