SEHARAMPUR

I was not in Seharampur for 24 hours and I had experienced a monsoon rain which according to everyone there had not happened with such intensity for as long as they could remember. I stayed with a pastor who also heads up a remote training and education ministry for young adults in the city and surrounding villages. So this pastor turns to me this evening as we were driving to the fruit market to pick up some fresh fruit and vegetables (including my new favorite, fresh mangos) and he says to me, “I think we should get some rain tonight.”

Some of the guys after doing a little clean up in the flooded basement.

Just a side note - I know that people in India have different ways of doing things and I really am all about engaging the culture and embracing the differences. Really I am... but there is one thing that is tough to get used to. I have noticed everywhere I go that men show affection for each other the way that women do in the states. Everywhere I go men are holding hands. You tend to see these kinds of things once in a while in the States, but it usually means something a little different. So when the pastor grabbed my hand and held it for a while as we walked through the market I swallowed my discomfort and told myself that this was India and they just do things differently here. When the pastor holds my hand he is not suggesting anything other than a simple demonstration of friendship.

Here is a little friend who appeared, I guess to avoid the flood waters that inundated his previous home.

Right… we get back to his home and his wife as cooked a wonderful meal, we are almost finished and we hear the rain come. It is loud on the tin and plastic roof. We have some fresh mangos after dinner and it is still raining. We step outside onto a small balcony and it is really raining and really windy out. We have a little chat outside in the wind and the rain, and one of the students runs up and says something with some urgency in his voice. I could not understand what he was saying because it was in Hindi, but the pastor begins to head for the stairs and I started to formulate some possible scenarios in my head.

The view from the rooftop where many household chores.

It turns out that it rained so hard the drainage system got backed up and could not drain all the runoff. It backed up into the basement, which is where the students sleep, and where the guest room is. Yeah, I am in the guest room. I could see water bubbling up through the floor and spilling into the area where the guest room is, which is in the lowest part of the basement, and where does water go?? It follows gravity, to the lowest part of the basement. Oh, and of course my duffle bag with all my stuff is sitting on the floor, in what is was two inches of water.

Storm clouds coming in before Sunset.

For a little extra drama, the door was locked and they could not find the key. Oh and so is the “electronic voltage corrector” was on the floor as well. It takes 220 volts of electricity and makes it 110 volts. If we were to turn that on at the wrong moment we would have been standing in two inches of electrocution. I pulled my bag out of the water, then got a chair and put the Electronic Voltage Converter on the chair, to avoid any possible accidental frying of myself. I checked through my bag to see how much I was going to have to string up on a clothesline over the course of the night. I was shocked to stick my hand in my bag and discover that everything was dry. Nothing got wet. I could not believe it. Except I did believe because I could see that nothing was wet. Needless to say my first day in Seharampur was a very interesting.