The rain has stopped, or rather, did stop two weeks ago. It's amazing how quickly I began to miss the rains. Since our arrival it has rained daily, and I always looked forward to our afternoon downpour. It would rain so heavy on our tin roof that it would be deafening until it lightened up.
I loved it. I love the rain. I loved how the sky would fill up with monstrous size clouds and they would swell and swell until you didn't think the sky could possibly hold anymore, and then just like that, they would explode with rain.
It will be about eight months until I see that sky again. The rainy season starts in May and runs through September and for the rest of the eight months of the year, it is dry. That's what I'm told.
And after two weeks with no rain, it is true. It doesn't take long for life to dry up here. This past week we have had an increase of bugs in our house, mostly our bathroom. Each morning I wake up and the tub is alive with little critters, coming up through the drain in search of water. They sit in the small puddles left over from the previous nights bath, desperate for refreshment.
It's amazing, one, how quickly you get used to living with bugs. And two, how vital water is to all living things. Water is life.
Without the rains our snails have gone away. I'm not entirely sure if they migrate (do snails do that?), or hibernate (not sure if that's a snail thing either?), or just die. But either way, they are gone. The kids found one in a tree on Sunday and we were so happy to see it we put it in the girls new "bug catcher" bins to watch and hold onto him a little bit longer. Yesterday though me and Marvelly set him free back in the yard to go wherever it is they go.
In the rains wake me and the girls have developed colds this past week. It might not be a cold, but it is cold-like. With no water the air quickly becomes very dusty because most of the roads are dirt. And with all the cars, trucks and motos zooming by they lift up the dirt and that is what you breathe. So, really, I think our cold-like sickness is just dust related. We are congested and coughing and hacking up stuff, but we are on the mend and our bodies will adjust to this new dry climate in time, just like we did in the States come Spring.
Yesterday it was overcast and the sky was grey and it reminded me of rain. I was hoping that it would, one last time, but it didn't. I was content though, just seeing the clouds and grey-ness of it all. It made the air a little cooler and the heat was less oppressive.
One benefit though to not having rain, if there is one, is that the roads seem to be better. We have to drive on one of the worst road we have been on since moving here to get to church on Sunday. Seriously, this road is brain damage waiting to happen. I would have to hold onto the girls with one arm and use the other to grip the roof handle to keep our heads from bouncing off the ceiling. It's less road really, and more really wide dirt path.
But this past Sunday it was almost actually smooth. Without all the water the rainy potholes have dried up and the dirt seems to have settled back down and filled in some of the craters. It wasn't half bad. We made it to church for the first time without fearing concussions.
I will miss the rains. But seasons change here just like they do everywhere else. It's just different kinds of seasons. And we will adjust to the different.
But right now eight months seems like a long time to wait, so in the mean time I may have to buy some "Kenny G-style, easy listening to, meditation inducing" hokey rain music that you hear in massage parlors when they're trying to get you to relax in order to get my rain fix. It may come to that. :~)
1 comment:
all that red dirt - so like georgia and s. carolina. hope you get a shower here and there. love ya!
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