After the storm

The anticipation of the hurricane mirrored my waiting, listening and watching for potential new work which I could make here. It’s heavy and thick and exciting and potentially disastrous. Today the sky was clear/my mind was clear. I wanted to get going. But we had been without power and water for over 24 hours and the forecast was that it would be at least a week to get it back on again. Our post-disaster situation was this: the back-up generator for the fridge had overheated and stopped working, the bath tub of water we had filled in preparation had been slowly draining through the day and nothing was left, the toilets were being taped off as more and more of them were getting blocked, the dishes pots pans and cutlery which we had left outside over night to get washed by the rain, remained unrained upon, we had not washed for a few days and all 13 of us had spent the better part of 24 hours in the kitchen – it felt communal, it was the centre of entertainment but in the brightness of day every surface was grimy greasy filthy, smelly, and disorganised.

We needed to clean, sort, categorise, and plan our post-disaster situation, one day of high-drama was an exotic experience, a week of filthy place and self was unpleasant. In particular we needed to work out how to get water and how to get power but very specifically how to get coffee, how to get the dishes and us clean and what to do about the toilets?

Which is how I found myself at this day spa.

We were the Collecting water for the toilets committee and after having scavenged amongst 8 industrial sized rubbish bins for drippy mouldy but potentially still useful plastic bottles, we were rewarded with a purifying cleansing swim in the river. After which we went home and sorted out our new dish washing system.