So where've you been? 29 The Andaman islands
I thought it was the monsoon coming at first. Then I thought it was me being weirdly unsettled because I was staying in a bamboo hut with no door ten yards from the sea, in an area where there were no other women right now.
And the packs of wild dogs, they didn't make me feel much safer. First person I met on Havelock had twelve stitches on her calf from the last pack's power struggle. The andamanese humans are too small to pose any physical threat, but the dogs ... you learnt to carry a large sharpened stick with you at all times.
Beautiful deserted island hideaway. Remote. Unspoiled.
Six hours from a hospital. Six hours from any concrete structure that could withstand a cyclone.
Add in some seriously disturbed mefloquine dreams. Carnage every night. Dream disaster.
For three days before the cyclone, there were rains. Lashing downpours, hard enough to bounce back up at you. Showering at a standpipe in the forest, the rains left you freezing after the baking dry heat of a normal day. Gradually, the rainstorms grew longer, harder, more dramatic. Thunder that shook the hut. Thunder that shook the ground. Electrical displays in the sky that made you thankful the mangrove forests had been thoroughly dampened down.
The day the cyclone hit, at 75 km per hour, the storms stopped. You could hear the winds approaching before they got to you - a dry rustle. If a rustle could sound like it's forty feet high.
Whistling, buildings shaking, mangrove pods and branches falling onto the hut roof at four minute intervals. Scared enough by the thumps and bangs and whistles, I nearly cacked myself when I heard breathing in between the wind bursts. The wild dogs were sheltering under my hut.
The tsunami had taken the beach shelf already. The tides were rising, and there were three ageing mangrove trees between the tides and my bed.
I know what to do if there's an earthquake. If there's an avalanche. If there's an uprising. Alls I know about cyclones is you wear red shoes and cry for Toto.
The east germans who looked like Freddie Mercury lit out at dusk, saying "aren't you scared to stay here?"
Not till you said that, mate. Not till you said that.
Don't think I slept a moment that night.
And the packs of wild dogs, they didn't make me feel much safer. First person I met on Havelock had twelve stitches on her calf from the last pack's power struggle. The andamanese humans are too small to pose any physical threat, but the dogs ... you learnt to carry a large sharpened stick with you at all times.
Beautiful deserted island hideaway. Remote. Unspoiled.
Six hours from a hospital. Six hours from any concrete structure that could withstand a cyclone.
Add in some seriously disturbed mefloquine dreams. Carnage every night. Dream disaster.
For three days before the cyclone, there were rains. Lashing downpours, hard enough to bounce back up at you. Showering at a standpipe in the forest, the rains left you freezing after the baking dry heat of a normal day. Gradually, the rainstorms grew longer, harder, more dramatic. Thunder that shook the hut. Thunder that shook the ground. Electrical displays in the sky that made you thankful the mangrove forests had been thoroughly dampened down.
The day the cyclone hit, at 75 km per hour, the storms stopped. You could hear the winds approaching before they got to you - a dry rustle. If a rustle could sound like it's forty feet high.
Whistling, buildings shaking, mangrove pods and branches falling onto the hut roof at four minute intervals. Scared enough by the thumps and bangs and whistles, I nearly cacked myself when I heard breathing in between the wind bursts. The wild dogs were sheltering under my hut.
The tsunami had taken the beach shelf already. The tides were rising, and there were three ageing mangrove trees between the tides and my bed.
I know what to do if there's an earthquake. If there's an avalanche. If there's an uprising. Alls I know about cyclones is you wear red shoes and cry for Toto.
The east germans who looked like Freddie Mercury lit out at dusk, saying "aren't you scared to stay here?"
Not till you said that, mate. Not till you said that.
Don't think I slept a moment that night.
posted by Lectrice at sábado, mayo 06, 2006
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