Day 1
We started hearing about some tropical storm warnings and hurricane watches the night before. We weren’t overly concerned about this because this has happened 4 or 5 times since we have been on the island and we have never had anything but a bit of heavy rain for an hour or two. I was receiving several messages from MD1 students with anxious questions…”if the power goes out today, do we still have school?”…”how do they communicate with us to tell us to come back?”…to which I replied, “don’t worry, I am sure this will be no big deal! Go to school as usual and it will all work out”. We showed up to our 8am classes and around nine, our physical diagnosis professor informed us that at noon, the school was going to be closing for the remainder of the day and would be reopening in the morning. She told us that we should stock up on some water and non-perishables as well as candles and batteries, and that we should put our passports in a waterproof bag, just in case. I texted home and let my dad, Lisa, and sister know what might be happening, just so they wouldn’t worry and could let everyone else know if I happened to lose communication. I didn’t want to freak too many people out over nothing but I didn’t want people trying to get a hold of me and worrying when they couldn’t.
My boyfriend Patrick and I left class early, at 10, to beat the inevitable rush to the grocery store since we had absolutely no water at home. We were standing in line along with about 20 other people, at the only open register in the place. We knew it was bad because even the local Anguillan lady in front of us was inpatient. She turned to us and said “now THIS is ridiculous. You know what would REALLY teach them a lesson…we could drop our baskets right here and just turn around and walk out. They would have to put all of this away”. I chuckled to myself at her sweetness…in North America people would do something like that because they forgot their wallet at home. By the time we got home from the store we had already received an email telling us that school was cancelled for the following day.
The power went out around 3oclock. I don’t have a cell phone here (I just use the phone services that run off of wifi)…so no power here means no cellphone, no electricity, no internet, no water. Great. It was still a bit windy out, but overall the weather wasn’t too bad. Around 5pm the wind and rain really picked up, and from there it got worse and worse. Patrick, my roommate Michael and I stood out on the balcony and watched the storm get more and more severe. A streetlight that was bolted into an electricity pole across the street started swaying back and forth and signs were blowing over. About an hour later we looked out again and watched the streetlight break right off of the pole. The storm went on and on all night long. Eventually the rain stopped and it was only a howling wind. The electricity box across the street even blew right open and a piece flew off of it.
Day 2
We woke up to a gloomy day, but the storm had finally passed. Looking out the window, Anguilla looked significantly more post-apocalyptic than normal. My room sort of looked like a hurricane had blown through it as well from the hurricane party we had thrown in there the night before. The bathroom already smelled worse than any hospital or nursing home I had ever worked in since we hadn’t been able to flush the toilet. Out in the dining room/living room area, there was mud/muck EVERYWHERE. The house has hurricane-proof windows which kept most of the water out but there were still some puddles and a healthy splattering of mud covering all of the furniture and floors. The dishes were starting to pile up and we were just hopeful that we were going to get power back soon so that we’d have water and could get all of this mess cleaned up.
Later that day after cleaning up what we could we went for a bit of a drive. There were electricity poles and lines down everywhere. There was all kinds of damage to all sorts of buildings, roofing blown off….you name it. It was clear it was going to take awhile to get Anguilla back to the way it was. Anguilla simply doesn’t have the manpower, heavy equipment or resources to just piece this back together overnight. We decided to stop by Patrick’s place to see if his water was working because we weren’t sure if his power needed to be working in order for his water to work. Sure enough, no power or water there, either. His landlord told us that he heard it would likely be several days until power was back up there, and probably closer to a week until there was power out where my house is!
One of the grocery stores thankfully had a generator so we stopped there in hopes of picking up some more water, and luckily they still had some. We scored twelve 1 gallon jugs. We were also starting to worry about all of the food in the fridge and freezer at this point and we were able to find another small store that had some ice. We got home and filled the large cooler that Lisa got us when she was visiting (THANK YOUUUU LISA) with ice and food we knew we wanted to keep and also threw some ice in the freezer with the rest of the food and tossed the rest in the trash.
Later that night our landlord brought us a big 10 gallon bucket of water with the instructions, “now you all shit in the toilet, then dump some water and it will flush”….well thanks.
Before bed, we each took a “shower” using a gallon bottle of water - half into a bowl that sat in the bottom of the shower to wash with and then poured the other half over us to rinse off. Man, if felt wonderful. The effects didn’t last long however - it was a HOT night…it was about 30 degrees all night (or 85 degrees for the ‘Mericans reading this), with no fans and absolutely no breeze.
Day 3
I finally caved and decided it was worth it to use a bit of the water that my landlord brought to wash some of the mud off of the floors because it was driving me absolutely nuts, so I poured some in the mop bucket and tackled it with pretty good results. It definitely made a difference. All of the rugs were still wet so the musty smell was still there but the smell of the floor cleaner helped some. We also caved and tossed everything that was left in the fridge and the freezer in the trash because it was stinking up the place too and cleaned those out. We headed out to try to find somewhere to charge up our laptops because everything was completely dead and we found a restaurant with a generator that had power and working wifi so we were able to charge up and connect with family at home and let them know that everything is OK.
We sat at the restaurant for a couple of hours waiting for things to charge up and while we were sitting there we received an email from our class representative letting us know that power was back up at the school so we would have classing resuming the next day. Wonderful. The classroom was going to smell great!
Night time was probably the hottest yet. We were happy to have charged laptops though to get a bit of studying done and to be able to watch a movie when it got super dark in order to pass the time. We decided to save our “bottle shower” for the morning because we knew it would be a sweaty sleep.
Day 4
We showed up to school after our bottle shower and found that about 60% or so of the class showed up. We were happy to hear that they had at least postponed our Physical Diagnosis quiz until the following Monday. It was sort of funny to hear all of the different stories about everyone’s different experiences so far. Some students were quite bitter about everything that had been going on and others were laughing about the whole situation. Several students had got their power back over the course of the night but most were still without power. Island Harbour (where I live) was one of the worst places hit and I was hearing it could be at least a few more days until power was restored in the area. Many students went to hotels that had generators to stay, something I hadn’t thought about. When we had heard that they were resuming classes already, we couldn’t believe it and were kind of annoyed. Despite not being able to shower and the frustrations of the past couple of days, however, it only made sense to be at school. There was power, running water, internet, flushing toilets, and it kept us from getting further and further behind in studies. So, here we are, still waiting for power, but carrying on. What an adventure!
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