Beyond the Rising Waters

The farmhouse creaked and groaned, battered by the torrential rain. My heart pounded certain the kitchen walls were about to come down—the only room with four walls—not that the homes in the tropical town of Pemba needed many walls. 

Drool dripped from the mouths of five gargantuan dogs, while I waited for their chicken to cook. The night steadily closed in around us and, along with the plummeting rain, it swallowed the land. 

Time was ticking, and only one road exited this out-of-the-way farm—one road that skirted the lake. With the dry season about to come to an end, the lake had been a bed of cracked mud that morning, but who knew how quickly it might fill up? I had no idea—I was just a volunteer worker. Worse, I was alone out here in the middle of nowhere, wearing a bikini, a slip, and sandals.

That morning, I’d been told, “Don’t worry, once the rainy season starts, the lake will slowly fill up, and you’ll have to skirt it a little more each time.” 

I was not informed of the possibility that it might fill and overflow in one single rainstorm.

Finally, with the chicken done, I quickly fed the dogs. In truth, the storm had scared them too, and they looked at me as if begging me to stay. But I didn’t know how long the rain would go on, and my heart wouldn’t stop pounding with the fear that I wouldn’t be able to see in the dark or get home in the rain. So I left them with their pleading eyes, grabbed my laptop bag, and raced through the rain to the less-than-reliable 4X4. 

And, as expected, it wouldn’t start. I guessed the battery terminal was loose again, the same way it had been since I arrived here two months back. So I unlatched the bonnet, jumped out—getting soaked to the bone in seconds—and tightened the screw I’d jammed between the battery terminal and its clamp. Dropping the bonnet, I dived back into the driver’s seat and tried again. The engine turned and caught. But in those few minutes, the night had grown darker, and along with it, the knot in my stomach. 

Before leaving, I made sure the gears were in 4L mode and the windscreen wipers were on maximum. My eyes were not great at the best of times, and this was not one of them. With the headlights on, I made toward the lake, and the second I left the farm gate and rounded the trees, I knew I was in trouble. The water was all around me! Despite the tall grass tipping it, there was no escaping the fact that this was one of the scariest touch-and-go moments of my life. Worse, it was not my car.

“Never stop in the middle of the water,” was the advice I’d received the day before. 

And so, I inched forward, head out the window and getting even more soaked than I already was. 

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop,” was the mantra playing on repeat in my head. 

To my right, rice paddies. To my left, the lake. Somewhere between, a road—submerged and completely invisible.

Still, there was one way to my home base, and so, I crept onward. Each moment, I had to decide—left a little, right a little—choosing the path of least resistance through the waterlogged road.

And then, through the dim car lamp light, the slight incline loomed out of the darkness—the road I needed to reach. But there was water to my left, water to my right, water straight ahead. It all appeared too deep to get through. But I kept going forward. I had seconds to make a choice. 

I decided to skirt the lake just a little more—just in case. Perhaps there was no right choice. Either way, I knew the second the car dipped in front. I’d made the wrong one. Instantly, I slammed it in reverse and revved the engine. 

Nothing!

The car didn’t move. Not a jot. Water flooded the floorboards, rising over my sandal-clad feet. I tried to go forward once more.

Again, nothing!

Slamming my fists into the steering wheel, a scream ripped up my throat, raw and broken, the last straw in this God-forsaken place. For a minute, I sat there, crying. Then I drew a deep breath, turned off the engine, slipped my laptop bag over my back, grabbed my cellphone, and climbed out the car into thigh-high water, locking it. Because another thing, I was told, was, “If a car is left in any uninhabited areas, unattended and unlocked, it will be stripped by morning.” 

And so, backpack over my shoulders, I started walking, barely noticing the pounding rain anymore. My feet were numb from cold, and I was shivering, partly from shock and partly because my scanty clothing was soaked through. 

No one could come. No one even knew. And the storm-ravaged roads were likely gone—washed away. But home was only a three-kilometer hike, and I was fit. 

Halfway home, my phone flickered to life—signal, finally. So I called my ex-husband, breaking down into sobs. He, unsurprisingly, reacted aggressively, saying, “How the fuck could those people have left you on your own in the middle of nowhere when they knew the rains were coming?” Then he went on to say he'd kill them—clearly just talk. Either way, it made me wonder why I’d bothered calling him at all. 

But it was up to me to get home to safety and warmth and being distracted by his irrational aggression was probably a good thing. A few days prior, a lady had been murdered in the neighboring encampment. Alone, on this road, in the dead of night, I didn’t need that reminder. 

I trudged onward, the thick, beach-sand road so familiar to me, the tall coconut trees, the dark green leaves of the Tamanu trees hovering overhead—a small reprieve from the rain but making the world around me even darker. Still, the small bends and curves took me closer to my home-base and with each step, the anxiety that had made my chest so tight began to recede.

Before too long, I stumbled into the encampment and into our chef’s arms. Jordan, a local man, and one of the very few who spoke English, took it in his stride. But of course, that just brought on a fresh wave of tears. “Don’t worry,” he said, “Go get dry and warm. I will send a guard to stay with the car for the night.”

The whole experience made me realize how resourceful these people were, how incredibly strong they were in the face of adversity.

The brightest sun arose the following morning, rain-drops twinkling off the leaves. And at dawn, several locals walked with me back to the site. Despite us not being able to communicate, they spent the whole day, helping to get the vehicle out of the lake.

My heart will always feel grateful to these people, and in the months since then, I have tearfully thought of how so many of the people I knew lost everything to the cyclone that hit the shores of Pemba. But, with the uprisings in the area, their lives have been fraught by tragedy for so long, I’m not sure even this will suppress their ability to pick up and carry on.

As a dedication, this short story would go out to Jordan and the guards who took care of me that night.