Raining cats and dogs.

The thunder of rain on our sheet metal roof this grey morning is making Zachary's hour of television viewing, or should I say hearing, challenging. I've turned the volume up seven digits, but with the varying pressure of the rain showers on our roof, the television sound is thoroughly unintelligible as only the high pitches, of the puppet characters' singing, break through. He's ended up standing right next to the set.

Milla, the lady who helps clean our house, has just chickened out of retrieving the bucket for washing the floor, which is sitting on the step right outside the back door. I tried stepping outside too, but the bucket is not worth it.

 

 

The main road today

As a result of the torrential rain, I'm writing this blog entry in WordPad and will upload it later when the internet comes back on. There is also no cell phone signal. This rain on Principe is something else and the volume would probably be more accurate to describe as raining goats and pigs, than cats and dogs...and it can continue through the night and day. Milla has just come to show me that our bedroom and bathroom are under water, with the sealing around the aircon and windows giving way to streams of water which are now running down the walls. We've found that our container home doesn't do so well in this hot, humid and rainy climate and we find ourselves putting towels down and re-sealing, often. Anyway, my potty-training toddler has just created a flood of a different kind down the side of his potty, which I need to attend to...

I'm back. Right, for those of you who like a few statistics, I've been told that on Principe it rains between 2,000 and 7,000 mm per year, the heavier and more constant rain sticking to the unreachable, mountainous, south side of the island. Mark tells me that we've had about 250 mm of rain per month since March this year - and it looks like May is working its way towards 300 mm. Apparently, we had over 360 mm of rain at the airport during October last year...