Yesterday we experienced our first SHAMAL up close and personal. A SHAMAL is basically a sand storm that blows through the desert. Like Hurricanes or Tornados, some are more severe than others. One blew through yesterday and it was on the more severe end!
For those of you who don't know, the girls have joined girl scouts and I am a girl scout leader for Olivia's troop. Blake is a Brownie and Olivia is a Daisy. For weeks our school has been planning a huge campout for all the girl scouts from many schools in Dubai. We were to camp in Sharjah, a nearby emirate, with over 200 girls. Weeks of planning went into this event and the girls were going to earn a very special Dubai cultural heritage badge when the weekend was over. The campout was to take place about 45 minutes away at a girl scout camp in the desert.
Here is what went down....Deric (thank GOD) drove us to the camp site to help us get set up. When we arrived the sun was shining and there was no sign of any storm. In fact it was HOT and the sky was blue! We started to get set up and all the girls started to arrive with their parents. The camp is a permanent camp ground and there were two types of tents: small ones that get setup on small concrete slabs that hold about 5 campers and one big one that was set up on the sand and holds around 100 campers. There are actually real metal framed camp beds and mattresses. It was meant to be kind of "Camping Light". Blake's group, the 3rd and 4th graders, were going to sleep in the large tent (think of something you would hold a wedding reception in...). Olivia and I were going to be camping in one of the small tents with her troop. We got her tent set up and she then ran off to find a new friend of hers in another tent. Deric, instead of leaving to take Luke to T-ball practice like he was supposed to, decided to stick around and help all the other families get set up in the big tent with Blake. Luke and Lilly were still safely chilling out in the minivan waiting to take off. I was chatting with a friend near the smaller tents. It's important to know all our locations!
At this point we had gone from a sunny day to an overcast windy day. Out of nowhere, the windy day turned worse... this is where the Shamal comes in. This Shamal was a really bad one, with winds that seemed as strong as any Hurricane I have seen. Out of nowhere the sky turned dark and sand howled through the campsite. I watched in horror as the large tent that had a metal structure started to lift up on the end that was pointing into the wind. In a matter of seconds it literally peeled up with the metal creeking and popping and lifted into the sky. On its way to OZ it took out a huge light pole. Deric was bringing more beds into the tent and was standing at the front entrance and watched the whole thing take flight... remember inside the tent were about 100 little girls and helpers organizing the beds for the camp out. As the tent flew, luckily it went up and back and miraculously missed hitting or landing on the campers inside. Had anyone been behind the tent at the time, this day would have been much worse.
This scene quickly turned to CHAOS with little girls and moms screaming, mattresses and gear flying through the air, and sand so thick you could hardly open your eyes or see more than 20 feet when you did. Everyone went into crisis mode and we began to take inventory... Where is Blake? Where is Olivia? Did the minivan blow away? Did Deric blow away? It was crazy! The first person I saw in my family was Blake coming from where the tent was screaming hysterically, sand covering her and just wailing "I want to go home!" and "Where is Olivia!?". I stayed calm for Blake and assured her that we were okay....the wind almost knocking us down as I assured her.
In the photo below you can see the metal framing and canvas that blew off in the background. About an hour before it had been covering all of those metal bed frames which had mattresses and sleeping bags on them. Some of the mattresses are way in the background against the hedges - many more blew to OZ. Words just cannot express what this tent blowing away looked and sounded like.
Deric and I saw each other and we made a plan. He took Blake and her friend to the minivan which we decided was the safest place to be and I went to find Olivia to do the same. Remember she had run off to play with a new little friend she had made. I know this sounds dramatic but I fought my way through the sand and wind to find my baby! I found her in a tent full of little girls and two terrified moms. The look on little Olivia's face was so sad and scared. I got her and we headed through the wind and sand to get to the safety of the van. The photo below shows the smaller tents that Olivia and I were going to stay in in the background. Those light poles you see are like the one that was toppled by the large tent.
During the CHAOS Luke and Lilly were in the minivan... Luckily Luke had just raided a recently discovered bag of mini-oreos and was in the process of eating the lute and sharing it with his sister. Thanks to the Oreos, they had no clue of the mayhem happening around them.
Needless to say there was no Girl Scout camp-out. As soon as I had matched all our girls with their parents we headed home. The girls were so upset. Traumatized would be a good word. Desert camping is a popular thing for families to do in Dubai and I am pretty sure our girls will muster the courage to try camping again under safer conditions. This is definitely one of those experiences that they will never ever forget though. Once again I feel I am being dramatic, but this was a dramatic scene. Thank God it didn't happened at night when all the dads were gone. Thank God Lilly and Luke were not in the middle of it - that was just luck! All that stuff flying around... we were very lucky.
GOD IS GOOD. There were only 2 minor injuries and all girls were accounted for and made it safely home. The Bryant 6 made it home and showered, dug lots of sand out of their ears, noses, and eyeballs, vacuumed the car, dumped loads of sand out of their bags and cuddled on the couch so happy to be safe and watched "The Neverending Story". We had dinner at the Sassos later that night where we relived the experience over some yummy homemade spaghetti. The kids brought their new sleeping bags and flashlights over and had a pretend campout safely inside.
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| After the chaos, but with the wind still howling... Three moms feeling such relief that everyone was safe. Notice how tan we look... That would be because we were literally covered in sand. We snapped this on the way out... I thought the picture of the girl scout flag still holding strong would be a good way to end this blog! |
