We just got a call from Rachel on someone else’s cell phone (another person in her village who has a cell phone, that is). She has no power for either of her cell phones and/or her server is not working, but fortunately one server is. She is indeed fine, thankfully, but she rode out the cyclone in her village, in her hut in fact. She had not been able to contact Peace Corps until this morning. The last message she got from Peace Corps said to find a place to sit out the storm, apparently, so that is what she did.

She said she lay curled under her table while the winds shook her walls and tin roof and was comforted by listening to her IPOD while the cyclone passed over. Worse was in fact the flooding that followed the cyclone. She says that the water rose 1.5 feet IN her house, which is of course on stilts. That means that the water in the courtyard was very deep indeed. She was able to get most of her things up high enough before she left with others in the village to seek higher ground. So few of her belongings were completely ruined–but that was the least of her worries, apparently.

Rachel was able to flee with Puppy and one of her ducks to a village on higher ground to stay with Marie-Iodile’s relatives until the flood waters receded. She says that Doggie was able to get himself to high ground as well, though one of her ducks drowned! All of the people from her village are fine–they are used to dealing with cyclones, of course.

She says that the bridges are all washed out so she is planning to walk 25 km early next week to get to M hoping then to fly to Tananarive as planned to participate in the new-volunteer training. She hopes she can hire someone to help her carry her things on foot to M since she will have to bring stuff for a month away.

Rachel says that the other two PC volunteers in her immediate area must be safe. One was in M, she heard, and the other off in the rainforest; the teams in the rainforest are able to shelter somewhere so he should be fine, she was told.

She said the kids are busy helping her get things cleaned off and outside to dry in the sun. She will have quite a story to tell this time, so more later, hopefully!

Rachel’s dad got an email this afternoon saying that Rachel and a couple of other colleagues/volunteers? were in a sturdy concrete building in M and were fine. A cyclone appears to have done considerable damage elsewhere in the island, but by the time it reached M it is said to have lost a good deal of its force. We will post more when we hear from her.

[To read what really happened–Rachel was not able to get to M so had to leave the village with village friends to escape the flooding–see postings in June of letters Rachel wrote during and after the March cyclone, received in the U.S. two months late.]