There was public electricity, and we were all gathered in the living room watching a popular TV show (My siblings and I) when my dad noticed the change in weather through the cold breeze that was filtering in through the opened windows.
The TV programme was halfway through, and we began to wish for the electricity not to go off because the power company seizes light at the slightest change of weather.
"You guys should pray hard so the light won't disappear before the programme finishes," my dad said, and just a few seconds after he said that, the light went off, and out of frustration, we began to lay curses on the power company as is our custom.
The weather got more serious with heavy wind, and we could hear windy sounds trying to pull off the roof, but we knew it wasn't possible because our house is one of the newly built houses in the area.
Such weather is so sweet to have a cool romance with the bed, so we locked the windows and went to our rooms.
The heavy downpour began; the seeds of rain were dropping so loudly, and the zincs were crying for help, but to us as humans, we were having the best moment with the sound of the rain.
It was around 11:30 p.m., in the midst of the heavy and windy rain, when I heard a bang on the door, calling my dad, "Mr. Philip! Mr Philip!"
My room was a bit closer to the main door, so I heard it loudly but was not ready to get up from my succulent bed because who could be knocking on someone's door at that late hour, in the midst of heavy rain?
But the banging continued in a more intense manner, and my dad was not hearing that because maybe they were asleep or because of the noise of the rain.
I got up and went to the door and asked, "Who's that?" and a man answered, "It's me, Daddy Grace". Upon hearing that, I quickly twisted the door and opened it for him, and I met him, his wife, and the little Grace drenched with a bag in his hand. I needed not to ask what was happening because it was obvious that something was wrong. A heavy wind with water blew, and they rushed inside our porch, and I slammed the door immediately. Gosh, the water from the breeze touched me, and it was so cold!
My dad has woken up already.
"What happened?" My dad asked them, and Daddy Grace said that the heavy wind had pulled off some zincs on their roof and the rain was dropping directly into their one-room, self-contained house.
"Oh my God! What about your properties? Please let's go and get them out before they get spoiled," My dad said as he wore his slippers and headed to the door.
Daddy Grace in his reluctanct mood answered, "I think they'll be safe; I used nylon to cover some of them before we came here."
"Cover? What about floods? I mean, what if the room gets flooded? Of course it should be flooded already with this downpour." My dad insisted, and the man agreed.
My dad, Daddy Grace, and I launched into the heavy storm to the house and succeeded in carrying out some of their properties, like electronic appliances and their clothes. We could not bring out things like chairs and beds because water had soaked them already.
They spent the remaining part of the night in our house that night, and when it was dawn, a lot of neighbours came out to sympathise with them, and we helped ,to bring out the soaked bed and chairs to get sunned.
He reported the ordeal to the landlord so he could repair the roof, but the landlord said he's not repairing because he didn't report the fault of the roof to him before the storm. According to the landlord, he insinuated that Mr. Grace noticed the damages in the roof but kept quiet and allowed the storm to destroy it first, which he went along with the common statement; "prevention is better than cure".
Daddy Grace was left with no option but to get a carpenter to repair the roof so as to provide shelter for his family.