Extreme weather - Madagascar Video Transcripts
Video 1 Transcript
They have like some of the craziest rainstorms you'll ever see they'll pop out of nowhere so like if it starts like dripping a little bit like it's about to come down hard and so you got to find somewhere to be but also the lightning is like nothing I've ever seen. One time my companion and I were walking in the rain and we went inside this gas station to kind of get out of it for a minute and we're sitting in there and lightning struck the building next to us and just like shook everything and like chopped the power to the gas station and everything.
Video 2 Transcript
Madagascar is nuts because it's mostly like a rice farming community. And so what they do is they put all the homes up on the hills so that they can plant rice down in the valleys where the water is going to get to. And in one place I served in called Finaransu, it was a big valley, hilly country, and like part of the country. And the weather, like the rain, hit one day and it was so bad that all the staircases and like pathways up the hills turned into waterfalls. Like I have pictures and videos of me trying to get down these like staircases literally with water up to my legs. I remember riding my bike in the same area, like on the bike with the water over my ankles, you know, riding through these like streets turned rivers. The mud gets crazy slick and slippery. It doesn't really clean the place, it actually ends up making it dirtier because it washes all the junk down the valleys into the streets and pathways and things. But that was always really crazy, surviving giant rainstorms. I remember my poncho was always really close and I had an umbrella in my backpack ready to go. But the rain and rainstorms are nuts.
Video 3 Transcript
It rains during the rainy season, it rains a lot, and it floods because the paths are pretty bad. So there was this one night, it was late and we went to go catch this appointment and the paths were just absolutely flooded. And I was walking back and we got to this courtyard and after wading through water that was up to our knees for a good 15 minutes or so, we get to this little courtyard. And I had to use the bathroom and so I just walk over to this wall where I could pee. And there's mud, water, mud, water, and then all the way up to the wall. And I start walking to the wall and all of a sudden the ground wasn't there anymore. Turns out it wasn't mud, but algae. So I sank in up to my chest.
Video 4 Transcript
I remember one night around Christmas, we were coming back from an appointment and we saw that it was going to rain, so we were trying to move as quickly as possible. And something about the area that we were in, the area was really prone to flooding, so every time it rained, you know, we were, people always told us, you know, don't walk on the sides of the road. Anyway, by the time we got pretty close to our house, it had rained so much that the water was basically up to our chests. You know, I almost lost my glasses, there was lightning everywhere, you know, it was so dark and the power was out that you couldn't really even see anything. I couldn't even see my companion, so that was pretty scary. And I actually have pictures from when we got home that night of, you know, just me being drenched in like brown water.
Video 5 Transcript
Okay, I love the weather in Madagascar because it in the areas I served in it didn't rain often but when it rained it just like was a sheet and uh there was one day where it was a holiday and we were walking down this kind of main street uh cobblestone thing and this wall of rain starts coming at us and everybody starts saying which means the rain is coming and ladies are just like abandoning their babies and leaving their packs and everybody's sprinting because they just don't want to get wet while we just like walk directly into it um so you see a wall of rain with a wall of malagasy's just charged and then all of a sudden right as the rain hits us just nobody and it made me laugh so hard there was one point where uh we were trying to get down these stairs and it was flooding up to our knees and so we just kind of slid and really dangerous but it worked
Video 6 Transcript
They have a big monsoon season where lots of rain will come through. And one year, a typhoon came through, which was just a big tropical storm, but it dumped lots and lots of rain right before monsoon season started. And then monsoon season came, and so the area I was in flooded really badly. And then monsoon season came, and it just kept getting worse and worse, even though the typhoon wasn't there anymore. And so we would have to walk in water up to our knees or higher sometimes to get to appointments or even just to kind of get from our house to the stores or to church. And it was really bad because most of the sewage is open, and so all the water you're walking in is dirty and full of human waste. But it was kind of fun, too.
