So yesterday evening we went over to the orphanage in the next block, to drop off a christmas present for the girls and hang out with the volunteers there.  We returned back to our block at around 9:30pm, and as we were walking up, we could see that the field in front of our house was on fire!
Apparently, some kids from across the street had thought it would be fun to toss some flaming logs from their fire into our field, which had just been cut down last week and was full of long, dry clippings.  Needless to say the field went up like a match.
Luckily the wind was blowing away from our house, so we didn’t have to worry too much, but we didn’t want to go to sleep with it on fire, in case the wind changed direction or something.  So we got the three buckets we could find and a garden hose that had so many holes it could only get a trickle of water through it, and started fighting the fire.  It only took about a half hour to get it under control.  However, there were a couple spots that were basically overgrown compost piles, and they were still burning down in the bottom, and the fire was spreading to areas that hadn’t burned yet from the bottom up, so we spent the next couple hours pouring water on them and trying to keep that from re-starting.  Eventually we figured it would probably be OK for the night, so we went to bed.  Then, less than an hour later, it started to rain, and that pretty much took care of everything.

Here’s a video from that night when we got home, its pretty dark, but you can get an idea for it.

You can also get it in HD here or on youtube.

Here’s a video I took this morning showing what burned.

You can also get it in HD here or on youtube.

Fire update:  As we mentioned, we couldn’t put out the parts that were burning really deep down so we left them.  Tuesday around noon the fire flared up again and doubled in size the burned area.   Tom got up from his nap to monitor it when it started creeping it’s way over to the bushes in front of our house again.  Once again it subsided over night and so we left it and went to bed.  Then Wednesday when we got back from our Nth trip to Immigration, it had spread again, this time spreading the length of the field away from our house and tripling the original area.  Today, Thursday, it finally burned up the pile of branches that were on top of the under ground fire and so all of the fire area is exposed.  We think tonight it may finally go out.  What a crazy week before Christmas!