Dry Clothes, Dry

Over the past few weeks or so Jamaica has experience the effects of multiple Tropical Storms/Depressions and Hurricanes. Most severely being Tropical Storm Gustav - the eastern part of the island took the brunt of this with extensive flooding and landslides from excessive rain. The rest of us in other parts of the island also received significant amounts of rain, but not as much. The main implications of this are more potholes in the road, more mosquitoes and our laundry not being able to dry. We have makeshift screens on our windows and yet the mosquitoes manage to get in. We've resulted to sleeping with our mosquito net down at night as we have bites all over us. The most frustrating part is cooking dinner or reading a book on the couch and having them buzz your legs relentlessly. It most certainly will get worse as we have a lot of stagnant water in the backyard with nowhere to go except sit there and wait to be evaporated. These are perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes and as a health inspector told me the other day, the vector (mosquitoes) can have a point of origin from as far away as 1/2 mile and still affect you. And this is the beginning of rainy season. Last year we had a mild September, but brutal October with it raining every day straight for four (4) weeks.

As to the laundry, we can only hope it dries before it rains again. We are back to putting two lines up on our veranda.

Oh one other thing we forgot was the mold. As many of you do not know, because a typical house in Jamaica does not have heating or air conditioning is not insulated very well. This results in moisture being in the air. The result is mold growing on the walls, our clothes and shoes. It's quite amazing.