Just Another Day

Saturday was one of those days. I knew it would be busy, because the secondary school had a PTA meeting in the morning and graduation scheduled for the afternoon. The unplanned events were just extras.

I was ready to leave for the PTA meeting at 9:30 when I decided to take a loaf of bread out of the freezer for lunch. I opened the freezer and picked up the loaf -- and it wasn't frozen! My freezer had stopped working—the victim of one too many power surges, I suppose. David and I quickly emptied it out and surveyed the damage. Most of the things in the bottom were still frozen, so we took those over to the Hamby guesthouse freezer. One chicken, some sausages, and some steaks that were in the top rack had thawed. I put the chicken on the stove to cook, gave the sausages to my neighbor, and put the steaks in the refrigerator to cook Saturday night.

Finally at 11:00 I headed for the PTA meeting. The lively discussions were still going strong at 12:45 when the sky grew dark with ominous clouds. A storm was on the way. I also had a chicken cooking on the stove and hadn't told David to turn off the burner, so I left the meeting and went home. A huge storm hit about 10 minutes later with torrential rains, violent winds, and pea-size hail. David and I watched limbs break off and fall from our back yard trees and wondered if we were going to lose another fence as we did last year. The power went out as it usually does in a storm.

We had just finished eating lunch when Justin, the security guard, called to say the roof had blown off his house. David suggested someone for him to call.

The storm abated, and I began to plan to return for the 2:00 graduation ceremony. There were four sponsored students who had no family coming, and I was to be their “Mom" for the day. At 1:45 we got a call that the shipping container of donated food relief was in Kalomo and we needed to send an escort to show the truck driver how to get to Namwianga. We also had to arrange for workers to unload the contents of the container so the driver could get back on the road.

Thomas Siafwiyo was supposed to be in charge of the container, so we tried to call him and found out that he was at his farm and out of cell phone range. (We found out later that he was trying to get back to Namwianga, but the storm flooded the usually dry creek bed and he was stranded until late afternoon.) We drove up to the school and found Andrew, the maintenance supervisor, just as he left the graduation luncheon. Although he knew nothing about this container coming and was planning to go to graduation, he agreed to help us out. He drove off to recruit workers for the unloading while David went into Kalomo and to find the truck and escort it to Namwianga.

I went on to graduation. There was still no power, so the packed auditorium had no lights and no sound system. I could barely see the front of the auditorium and couldn’t hear much of anything. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to tell when my students were awarded their diplomas, so I ended up standing near the front with my camera ready to catch the moment.

Graduation ended at 5:00, and the container was unloaded by 5:15. The power was still off at our house, but we found out that Don and Laura Oldenburg had electricity at their house near the clinic. I volunteered to cook the thawed steaks at their house, and we invited Louisa and Ashley to join us for dinner. We enjoyed our time together and managed to have a very pleasant ending to a chaotic and eventful day. By the time we got home at 9:30, the power was back on at our house.

David and I have a saying about days like this. When spoken with just the right drawl and a smile, it pretty well sums things up: “Just another day in paradise.”