Floods in the Road, Swimming Lessons

The rains keep pouriing down and the roads quickly flood.  Mostly they're paved, but there also are dirt paths leading off the main streets, and there are many big holes in the roads - construction projects of unclear purpose.  The "sidewalks" are large paving stones quite a bit higher than the road level - curbs as high as a foot up - but with many of the stones missing or removed for who knows what reason.  Last night it began to pour just at 6 pm, when I planned to leave the office, so I waited and waited, listening to the roar of the water, but finally I got fed up and went down to see how bad it would be to walk home.  At the front of the office there are 3 small steps up, and the water was up to the third step, making it about mid-calf deep. I waited some more, with a nice young German fellow who has a 15 minute bike ride home, discussing our options.  The rain lightened, I turned my pant-legs up to my knees and set off, leaving him behind.  Slosh slosh, trying not to think about what was in the water (of course making that the only thing I could think of), passing a cow right outside our gates which was mooing unhappily.  I commiserated briefly and kept going. I congratulated myself on remembering the big hole in the intersection down the road a piece, which was totally covered in water.  Another few hundred yards along I was attracted to the sidewalk, because it was above the water level, so I stepped up onto it, and walked another few feet, and then came to some water at the level of the stones, just too wide to step over.  So I stepped into it...and fell into a hole up to my chest.  In my alarm I instinctively raised my arms up high, saving my bag with my laptop from going in as well, (shrieked, no one came) and I'm not sure how I got out, but I did, very quickly, with the help of lots of adrenaline.  My fears about the computer trumped my disgust with the contents of the water.  As soon as I got home, in another 3  minutes, all at the same time the clothes came off, the computer got wiped down and turned on (Yes!) and I ran to the bathroom to shower off.  This morning, all the water is gone and I inspected the hole, confirming that it's really a sewer, and finally really noticed the configuration of the sidewalks. The place to walk is down the center of the road.  And the laptop should always be in a couple of plastic bags, though that would not have saved it if it really had gone down with me.  Through the night I had bad dreams with swimming pools prominently featured.  (The malaria meds cause nightmares; oh happy day.)  Also on the way to work this morning a large coconut fell out of a tree, landing a couple of feet from me, causing quite a fright.  Wouldn't that be a shitty way to go?