When Day turns to Night….

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Last year I had a post called “When Night turns to Day”. Well, yesterday, our day turned to night…. and Elizabeth and I happened to be out in the  middle of it when it happened… let me explain….

We decided we needed to go grocery shopping, so I called a taxi (women are not allowed to drive here) and he came to pick us up at 4pm. As we walked to the car, I commented, boy, it is windy…. We got in, and started driving …. by the end of our street (50 meters) we saw all this sand flying in the air, a bit like this photo:

By the time we turned the corner it looked like this:

And this:

Next thing you know we couldn’t see a thing… and I said to the driver, maybe we should go back! And he’s like, Yes Madam!!! So, we turned around and by the time we went the 100 meters back to the house everything was pitch black!

We got out of the car and the sand hit us – like little pin pricks all over our skin, and we could hardly breathe… We ran into the house and once in there we could still smell the dust. It is the strangest thing when you can smell and taste dust. Not very nice at all.

Houses are not so well built here and the dust came in from under the doors, in between the windows, and… through the kitchen fan:

Needless to say the dishes that were drying had to be washed again, not to mention almost every surface in the house. Sigh!!

After about 10 min the world went from black to orange again, and then the sun managed to come out. We then had some rain, which resulted in lots of mud. So when I woke up the next morning I was faced with this outside my front door:

 

The sad thing is that after a storm this bad, the only thing you can do is get the hose out and spray it away…

And even that doesn’t get rid of it all. I had ladies coming to the shop so I had to at least try to get rid of some or else it would all walk into the house, so I got out there in my shorts and bare feet and swept and hosed away. At least the sun was shining again and I got some Vitamin D.. but it’s still really muddy and dusty out there.

I have to say, this is the worst sandstorm I have seen in all our years of living here. Never before has it turned pitch black at 4 in the afternoon. It was a real experience!! And something I hope won’t happen again in the near future – all that dust I can do without!!