We stepped outside and looked around. Something wasn’t right. We heard it overhead, a loud noise. Now we had to determine the source and how quickly we would move to the bunkers.
This far out in the frontier, distant noises are a cause for concern. Flying machines are even more rare, so they grab our attention, whereas at most bases and back in the states, airplane noise dissolves into the background of our every day. For us, it means something has gone very wrong.
Up in the sky we saw the reason. It was not a mortar being fired. It was thunder. Clouds had come across the mountains, bringing with it our first rain since arriving. Higher up, it was the first snow. Our turn for snow will be coming soon. And it will be relentless.
We know it rains here; we arrived during the dry season, but ruts cut into the sides of the mountains show rain’s path, and the path the melts will take in the spring.
Out on the streets in the villages, shopkeepers pull in their wares underneath the awnings that serve both as shade and as their security door once night rolls through. A shop is generally little more than a hole in a wall with an old fashioned garage-door type closure. There is no electricity.
We pass through town, tires crusting in the mud on the normal roads, then flinging it wildly on the paved streets. Our speed varies. We do it to keep from getting into patterns, but we also do it so we don’t dirty the women walking by in their chadarri.
The rain falls in fits, clearing the dust from signs. What were once strange scribblings are starting to take shape in my mind. The meanings of the words are still mostly a mystery, but I can make the sounds and read the numbers. Attempting to shift in my seat, the gear we wear making it difficult, I peer through the narrow window to my right. Peaks in the distance are grabbing their winter coating of purity, white on white.
So we pass, moving to our next meeting, our next opportunity to guide and shape. We hope for the best, happy to breathe in the air, this time with a hint of moisture and almost no dust, like back home. We can only prepare and watch for so much. As they say, the rest is in God’s hands.
We’re all praying that God’s hands keep you safe!
What Teresa said.