Thursday September 1, 2005

This day began the same as the previous day. I awoke to find a beautiful sun rising in the sky but no smile on my face. I didn’t care that the sun had come up. I was still there in the strange apartment, surrounded by water. I decided to spend the day on the floor. Laying there with my thoughts was as comfortable as it was strange. I realized how little I was feeling. How my emotions were completely numb to the pictures in my head. This truly bothered me. Maybe I was just thinking too much, how could I not think. I remembered my bag. Inside was my book. “When the elephants dance”. My sister had mailed it to me and I never got the chance to begin reading it. I packed it, of course, for reading but also in case we needed toilet paper. I figured I may as well begin reading it so we’ll have something to use. I remember thinking, that if we have to use my book as toilet paper, make sure everyone begins taking pages from the front. From the pages I have already read. It was this thought that made me realize, I AM NOT READY OR WILLING TO DIE HERE! This was refreshing. It was enough to get me up off of the floor. I went outside onto the balcony. The courthouse looked the same. No helicopter. I assumed everyone was still inside. I looked to see if the boats were still tied to the stair case but I couldn’t see them and immediately realized why, the water is going down! I screamed! Everyone ran outside to see and we all began screaming with excitement! The night before, the water had been up to the bottom of the balcony. Now, it was down, considerably, probably down to about 8-10 feet. About half of the water had drained during the night! It was rejuvenating! It put such a spark in all of us! It was just an incredible feeling! Looking out, roofs were completely showing. Yesterday, it had looked like we were on a lake, today, it was a neighborhood. My neighborhood. A sad feeling came over me and I wanted to cry. But this was no time for tears. I couldn’t cry. There was too much to look forward to. We were no longer destitute. The water had come down and the possibilities were popping up. We had to start figuring things out. We obviously were not going to get any help. We would have to help ourselves. We went inside and started talking about someone getting into the pirogue and looking for help. Maybe there was help to be had. Maybe they couldn’t get to us and didn’t even know we were there. It was the only smart thing to do. At least look. While 2 of the guys went out, the rest of us talked about what we might do, what we could do. It was a quiet conversation. When the guys came back, they looked sad. It was obvious there was no one and nothing to be found. We stayed in the apartment, carefully watching the water slowly recede. At this point it didn’t seem to move at all. But slowly it did. We estimated 8-10 the previous night. By sun down, it had only gone down another foot. So very slowly but it was going down. It was no longer standing and most certainly not going up.