Siwa the Swamp

On the evening of the 5th of February clouds were looming in the sky looking a little heavy an unpredictable. Siwa encounters perhaps a couple of millimeters of rain a year, if that. The place is bone dry. Sand storms are a regular occurrence but rain is scarcer than a bacon sandwich round these parts.

Anyway, after a merry roast everyone hit the sack, expecting the clouds to have disappeared by the morning. 

I awoke on Sunday to a funny smell which I couldn't place for the life of me. It was a musty, cementy smell. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, at which point I realised my head hurt slightly from the night before. I paused for a second before lowering my feet to the floor and into an inch of freezing cold water.

Water was streaming out of every plug socket in the room and dripping unremittingly from every door frame and crack imaginable. It was something out of one of those weird dreams where everything distorts and turns into something else. The lovely blue wall paint was bulging into giant globules on the wall, sagging with fausty water. Being on the top floor meant I had first dibs . It had soaked through the layer of rotten rubbish and crap lying on the roof and seeped into every  crack and cranny imaginable.

The carpet in the main room was stinking and sodden and as I tried to squeegy the water out and onto the tiled area, disgusting waves of brown, most likely cholera-infested swamp water came gushing forth.

Luckily, I have little possessions as it is and the night before I must have been sober enough to not toss random items of any value on to the floor.  As I attempted to drain the marsh that was now my apartment, the stench of years of unwashed carpet nearly made be gag. After dropping a few things in the quagmire in an attempt to move them to higher ground the phone rings and Penny announces that school might possibly be off this morning. Their house out in the sticks was inhabitable last night and all the school books are now teetering of the brink of disintegration. She them reminded me that the wiring here is the dodgiest on the face of the planet and not to go touching any dripping light switches or poking any plugs. The town was already starting to resemble a mini firework display so I took onboard the advice and got back to sweeping muck out the front door and down the stairs probably straight into someone else's apartment.

Town was completely drowned and lights were sparking all over the place.  The majority of Siwan houses are made of mud and bits of straw and found objects which gives me the impression there isn't likely to be any drainage system installed in this state of the art metropolis. The shop next door is doing a roaring trade and has sold out of plastic sheeting within the first hour of business. People are rushing to gift wrap their houses against another downpour. Ludmilla had left me her plants to look after whilst she went back to Russia for a month and I had, up until now been very green-fingered and nurturing towards them. They sat on the balcony soaking up the sun. Now however the majority of them resemble miniature potted mangroves, some of them are completely pulverised into mush after meeting a watery end on my bedroom floor. 

I'm hoping to get away with using the Natural Disaster- get out shit free card. Fingers crossed. 

It was only after 2 hours of de-waterfying the place did I remember I had a rabbit on the other balcony. Poor Revo. I braced myself to find a cold soggy dead bunny lying in a  pool of poo and water but it turned out it was just not his time...yet.

His lovely Blue Peter-syle abode was indeed a little droopy but it appeared the other end of the apartment was was drench-free.

Today is Friday and even though water has stopped dripping incessantly from the ceiling, I have had to roll up my stenchy carpet and take it for a dunk in the kids Pool. The reason for this was that there had become strange smell which later Penny identified as cabbage. Old cabbage smelling carpet. Not good. Apart from that everything is pretty much back to normal. The roads are beginning to be passable again and I can ride my bike to school without disappearing head first into a swampy trench.

Aside from causing a truck load of destruction for 3 days, the rain in Siwa was undoubtedly a once in a life time occurrence. I'm glad I was here to witness the drenching but I'm also glad it only happens once a century. 

th