We are not in Kansas anymore...

A week ago, I went to bed like any normal evening; cool, slight breeze and very tired. I woke up at 12:30 to a very noisy wind. The wind has woken me up before but it sounded like a plane was about to crash into my room.

I got up, wee'd in my bucket, looked around in the dark but could see nothing out of the ordinary. I took a drink of water from a cup sitting on my table. The room was quite breezy inside, thinking nothing of it, I decided to crawl back into bed.

The noise of what I assumed were trains crashing in my yard kept me tossing and turning.

Two hours later I was up again. Used my bucket again and decided to grab my head lamp (a camping light that goes on your head so your hands are free). I looked around, the wind was blowing through my hair. The sound of the wind on my roof sounded unfamiliar and of a magnitude I can't describe.

The headlamp exposed a half full cup of water filled with sediment and dust. Had I drank the other half of this muck two hours earlier? This panic was quickly forgotten when I heard the instantly recognizable squeak of nails being pulled out of wood. I looked up and the beam of light from my head lamp exposed four inches of space along my back wall between my wall and ceiling. This was a new kind of panic. Dust was being blown in by the wind and my tin roof had become a musical instrument to be played by mother nature.

In this great moment of confusion I returned to bed and pulled the sheets over my head. I contemplated the basic need of shelter. See Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. For the first time in my life I was faced with not having shelter. Of course for me it would only be a temporary state, but I did find some sympathy for the millions of people around the world who struggle to meet this most basic of needs.

I woke up a few hours later to the first sings of daylight and a very dusty room. My roof was still there, but the gap along the back wall was probably millimeters from having become airborne. My host mother asked me to wake her up next time this happens..... Next time?..... what could we have done? Anyway, there will be no next time. She told me that the roof was probably one big gust away from being blown off.

At this moment I was minutes from leaving for a days travel to Pretoria. I handed her my keys and she assured me they would remedy the... situation. That afternoon my host brother nailed the roof back down and the next day they all collected large stones from the river bed and put them on the roof. The roof now appears to be sturdy, but the fear to meet basic needs remains at the back of my mind.