Flood!

I always smile at those who say that the flood was a localized event. How could God promise that He would never send something like that again if it was merely a local event? The details just don’t seem to add up.

Today was essentially a day off. Ken and Mary are at the Lami church, and I had nothing on the docket, so it was a lazy day. I got up around 10, coaxed myself into the cold shower, made some lunch and planned to go into town to make some phone calls back home. However, it was raining pretty hard all night, and I certainly didn’t want to make the trek into down with the rain coming down. So I waited.

Around 1, the rain cleared up. Jong had messaged me earlier to check up and make sure everything was ok... because it was flooding in Nadi! Naturally, I had to see the phenomenon for myself! The internet cafe is on high ground, so perhaps it was still open to. So I packed everything into my backpack, and headed into town.

You can check the pictures for yourself, but the Nadi river had swelled over it’s banks. I had to wade through water that was over my knees. It was a lot of fun. All the Fijians were out having a ball in the water, laughing and splashing one another. A group of us held onto one another to make sure no one got swept away by the current, and once I made it to the bridge, water was no longer an issue.

Unfortunately, the internet cafe wasn’t open, but I did sit down at a coffee place and finish up an assignment for my Internship course. Chatted with a guy that Jong and I actually saw yesterday at the Shangri-La... he was stranded in Nadi because of the flooding and they were waiting for the water to go down so they could make it back down the coast.

And then I set out to come back to the BDC. A Toyota truck was about to drive through the water, so I jumped on with a bunch of Fijians. I was riding ‘Fiji Style’ as they like to call it here. We made it through no problem, and I stayed on the truck until the exit to the BDC. Don’t tell Dad (as if he’s not reading this!), but there were moments in time when we must have been going 60 or so. The Fijians were hooting and hollering at all the other cars, it was hilarious.

The truck actually blew past my stop, and the driver had no intention of stopping anytime soon. But a bus pulled out in front of him a few blocks down, and I took the opportunity to jump off the back. The Fijians found that pretty hilarious too. It was quite the adventure, check out the few pictures I took of the water!