Rain, Rain, Rain!

  Yes, the rain continues.  I don’t think they count inches of rainfall here – (Of course it would be in centimeters), it would be interesting to see how much rain has fallen on the border of Burma and Thailand.  I would guess we might be at a conservative 5 feet by now just in the last week!   To confirm this we found out that 300 houses in a border refugee camp (MaeRahMu), just 3 hours north of us were swept away with the raging torrent.  Water is involved in every phase of life here right now.  In America the northern states experience great avalanches of snow, sometimes most devastating.  Here we experience mud slides!  The rain has soaked into the soil at such a great depth that huge areas of trees and mud cut away large basin shaped sections of the mountainsides.  Often the road we travel on the border is totally covered by so much mud and foliage that you have a hard time imagining that there once was a road there.   In some places the road itself is cut out like a giant cookie cutter on the downhill side of the road, as the soil underneath the pavement gives away, and dirt, pavement, large rocks, and trees slide out.Here at Sunshine Orchard the creek is threatening to break down parts of the high bank by the stream.  In one place where the bank used to be about 5 feet from the path, now has broken down all the land right up to the path, scooping out the dirt underneath the path.  I don’t think it is safe to walk that way just now.