Still Here....

I survived my first cyclone. As much as I joked about cyclones before getting to Madagascar, I never actually thought I would see one. I guess I was wrong about that. 

I'm still in Tana waiting to hear what happened to my town and to my house and to the entire East coast of Madagascar. I got to Tana on Sunday night, and the cyclone hit Tana late Monday night. During the day we did some cyclone prep. Since most of us didn't know we were going to be evacuated, no one had enough clothes. So we had to go fripping and buy new wardrobes. We also had to eat bagels and delicious food at the Cookie Shop in case it flooded after the cyclone. And then we also had to buy some groceries and boxed wine and candles. So we were all ready for this massive storm. But it seemed as if we were the only people who were concerned. The Malagasy people we saw didn't seem too worried, which was a little weird. Except my counterpart did call me and say that she wanted to move my stuff into the mayor's house so it wouldn't blow away. Luckily I had a key hidden in my shower...

So the cyclone hit late at night and I woke up to lots and lots of rain, the roof leaking and really loud wind. I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. It poured for most of the day on Monday and at one point we wandered out of the Meva to find food at the gas station. There were lots of trees and billboards down, and next door a huge tree had fallen on a car. But we didn't see any flooding so the damage looked minimal. And thanks to Peace Corps, the Meva had a generator that ran the entire time. So I had electricity and wifi through the cyclone. By around noon on Tuesday, everything was over and the sun started to come out. And the waiting began...

Unlike storms in the US, news about the storm wasn't instantaneously updated online. It was surprisingly hard to find any information about the storm, and the info is still coming very slowly. The storm apparently hit the coast (where I live) as a category 4 storm,  and now no one knows anything. All the cell phone towers are out so its hard to reach anyone from the coast and of 500ish communities that were affected by the storm, only about 80 had been reached today. Crazy. I can't go back to my site until I hear that I have a house and that the road still exists...and I still don't know when that will be. The newspapers today said that Vatomandry, Brickeville and Moramanga had been destroyed...and I live pretty close to Vatomandry. I have no idea what to expect.

But until I hear something from Peace Corps, I'm stuck here...sitting on a couch and reading news articles about Giovanna. And looking at the radar which shows another cyclone forming in the Indian ocean, and Giovanna turning around in the Mozambique channel and hitting Madagascar again. Yay cyclone season.