Dry Season

This was a photo from some time last year. I had more, but the internet is not cooperating.





Dry season! Black boogers and an endless, dry hack of a cough. Chapped lips, sunburn, dust clinging to your skin. Everyone is orange! One color, one people! Dust colored!

I don’t remember really hating dry season the last time around. I was excited for wet season because I hadn’t really seen it and I like rain in the States. You get to use an umbrella, sit inside and read or stay in bed. Get in your car and use the windshield wipers. It’s the same here, except then the rain doesn’t stop and you lose your umbrella and end up buying twelve of them. Then you lose those and the handle breaks off your newest one because it was cheaply made in Korea. But you still carry it around handlelessly, the twisted metal cutting into your palm. And you can’t just sit in your house because it smells like a wet dog and there are green things growing on all of your patiently-waiting-for-dry-season clothes and you go outside and get wet and the water comes through your tennis shoes and there is mud on your butt from your shoes getting sucked in to the goop and the goop violently releasing your shoes again and again. Unlike the Africans, for us wet season does not include sitting in the traditional kitchen over the traditional kitchen fire during the evening when you come in drenched and shivering. You feel hypothermia setting in because it’s in the 60’s and you know it can happen. And you know the hospital is far away and you don’t want to bother the medical officer because you’re not sure if its hypothermia… so maybe its not. Probably not. You’d probably know if it was, right?

So, I didn’t hate dry season before. Didn’t hate it, but I was excited for the rain. But then I hated parts of wet season (did I mention the rash I had that just wouldn’t go away?) and was thrilled for the sun to come out and dry everything up: my clothes, my rash, nasal congestion, black mold I was sure was growing in my lungs. Dry season! Glorious. But it seems that every season has its serious downsides. With every passing truck, I watch the plume of dust rise and move towards my front door. It sticks to the cleaned laundry hanging on my porch (cleaned by my hands), then moves closer and leaves little particles on my not-so-clear windows. Some gets into the house, building up on the floor, the tables and chairs. I have already mentioned the blackness that comes from the nose. My eyes are like an advertisement for those lubricating drops…. Like when they put the sand on the huge eye and then pour water over it. When cars pass on a dusty road, I hope I’m on the side the wind is coming from. Sometimes it doesn’t happen and sometimes the air is stagnant and I turn my back on the dust. But it hugs me and finds my face and I taste the attic-y flavor enter my mouth and feel the miniscule pieces of soil sticking to my lungs.

It could be a lot worse. The people on the other side of the ring road have an hour drive on nothing-but-dust part of the road to reach Kumbo (there is no air conditioning in the cars and all windows must be closed… I suppose I should mention it is wildly hot during the day). I come visit there from time-to-time, so I understand a bit. My friend Ally lives after the town of Kumbo on a major part of the ring road. The road is not paved and there is something about the earth up there that allows it to, when very dry, suspend in the air for what seems like hours (eternity, really… the eternity that is dry season). The red air blots the sun out at times, making it seem like rain clouds have collected and are about to break (there is no break). Ally also has no flowing water in her house, and she must (happily) let the “Ndu Powder” settle on her stuff.

So, misery and frustration would be the words I would use. Maybe not all the time, but a lot. Dry season and wet season… the weather here is brutal. You cannot escape it. Luckily for Ally and I, we don’t have to stay here. But its very good to know that people do live with dust or black mold in their lungs at different times of the year, because it really puts American’s coughs and colds in perspective. Or maybe I just don’t have what it takes. I am really looking forward to the wet season.