It is a typhoon day. The wind is howling outside, like something that has lost its way and is screaming for help. The trees on my fourth floor verandah have been blown over as the wind has tantrumed around my house. Rain is falling in a never-ending curtain of wetness, flooding the streets and creating the sense that it is perpetually dusk, even though it is mid-morning. There are no sounds of human traffic from the street below. Everyone is huddled in their homes, or like Pei Han, sheltering in bed.
Typhoon days are cause for celebration for many of us. No work, no school, no mid-summer heat. The celebration takes the form of not doing anything at all - sleeping, reading, watching TV. For the more industrious, who just have to do something, there's catching up on things for which there hasn't been time on fair weather normal working days.
Typhoons are tracked religiously from the time the western Pacific gives birth to them off the Philippines and as they make their agonizingly slow progress north-west. For days before they strike Taiwan, if that is their forecasted track, everyone is talking about the upcoming event and wondering if the promise of a day off work will materialize.
However, there is another side to this story. As the second typhoon in just over week is making its way towards us, many are frantically boarding up their homes and businesses against the ferocious winds and sandbagging their homes against the inevitable floods. Those living in mountainous areas are fleeing their homes for fear of landslides and devastating flashfloods, which exact their deadly toll with every typhoon.
Much of our day is spent watching the local news, seeing the heartache and trauma that is being experienced in other parts of the island and feeling grateful that we in our little home are sheltered from the worst the typhoon can deliver. As the eye of the storm passes over us, sunshine glitters on the rain-drenched streets and an eerie quiet envelopes us. Some take advantage of the brief respite to rush to the store or to strengthen their defenses against the onslaught that must follow once the eye has passed.
About an hour later the leaves on the balcony plants across the road from us start swaying as the breeze picks up and within a few minutes the plants are gripping determinedly to their pots as terrifying sheets of horizontal rain flash from right to left past our lounge window. There is something awesome about the power of nature in full display that creates an excitement unlike any other. Perhaps it has to do with the sense that I can sit comfortably and safely in my home and watch it live through my window, that I am a step I dare not take away from disaster.
For further comfort I went to have an afternoon nap, lulled to sleep by the sounds of natural fury outside.
Dion Marc Delport
4 August 2008