Turns out the firefighting is pretty simple here. We have a bunch of construction guys at school in the process of building a new classroom building. They had a lot of shovels on hand. A fire started down the hill below the school and as the driving wind pushed it up towards the school, a bunch of the guys grabbed their shovels and got to work. They started digging very basic fire lines, as well as just tossing dirt onto the flames and smothering them. Very effective.
A bunch of women from the houses of the school also came down to help, armed with leafy branches. They wasted no time in starting to swat at the burning grass, literally beating back the flames. When the fire started to spread around to the other side of the school, the students also pitched in, taking the same approach as the village women and beating back the flames with branches.
No one seemed overly concerned, and I can’t blame them. The school is all built of stone and cinderblock and tin. A low burning grass fire can’t damage it much and the wind was blowing the flames away from the thatch-roofed village. No one was in any particular danger and no one was hurt. So I’d say all in all, it was a very minor emergency. In fact, the students seemed to find it all very interesting and there was a rather festive atmosphere on campus. But a good learning opportunity to me and a nice reminder of how much people value community here. Volunteer firefighting is a community effort no matter where in the world it happened. And so, here’s a huge thank you to firefighters the world over!
P.S. My ability to post for the last two months has been glitchy. I apologize for the long gap and for the coming burst of posts.
Mountain Tales 