Gratitude Day #6

I had to go out in the rain yesterday afternoon, to a meeting. Driving there, the rain was coming down in buckets. (The canal flooded, after only 2 hours of rain, so you must know how much rain came down in those 2 hours!) Driving along, with the windscreen wipers and aircon on, I was toasty warm, and beautifully dry, and I thought of those who live in squatter camps, or informal settlements as they are now called in PC speak.

Driving home again, I observed several streets in my area flooded, and the canal overflowing. I observed (and participated in) people stopping to gawp at the water level. It is incredible. No doubt about it. 

But then I thought again of those living in squatter camps. I thought of those who have no decent roof above their heads and probably have to contend with leaks, and the drip-drip-drip all night, or the sound of rain on a tin roof, keeping them awake for most of the night. I thought of those who live in areas where the "roads" are nothing more than severely pot-holed dirt paths filled with rubbish of all sorts, and how going home, or out, requires walking these "roads", and how during this kind of rain these "roads" become a slow-moving mud river, with goodness knows only what hazards hiding in the mud, or the invisible potholes. I thought of those who only have shared, public toilets and no private sanitation/ bathrooms, and who must navigate these "roads" in order to relieve themselves... at night. I thought of those who have no running water who must navigate these "roads" in order to get water to drink, wash and cook with. I thought of those who have no electricity and live in shacks and who will freeze this weekend (hopefully not literally, although I have no doubt that children and the elderly are at risk of just that this weekend) as the rain and the wind chill their little tin shacks, or creeps through the untreated wooden walls.

I thought of all these people, and I am grateful for being warm and dry tonight, and this weekend.