Rain

Whenever I think about rain I think about the Family Guy episode where Weatherman Ollie Williams says, “It’s gonna rain!” or “It’s raining sideways”. So here we are in rainy season and I find myself looking up at the sky and thinking, “It’s gonna rain!” Let’s just say that working at a beach has given me a very acute sense of when it’s going to rain.

Anyway, the rain brings big changes to Poa (my village). First of all, everything is starting to get green. The trees and bushes that have been dead-ish for the past 7 months are most definitely not dead now. There are little rivers that trickle during the day, and right after it rains are somewhat reminiscent of the flash flood scene in 127 Hours.  Also, it’s really awesome being able to sleep comfortably at night.

Another one of the big changes is that everyone is in the fields. The way it used to be was that everyone was around all the time (again with a village comprised of for the most part subsistence farmers, when it’s too dry to plant, what else are you going to do?). Now, it’s almost like a ghost village in the morning (CSPS patient numbers are down at the moment), it slightly lightens up during the repose (nap time), and then drops slightly during the evening, only to pick up again (slightly) at night.

It also messes with attendance at things like baby weighings, and other meetings, and if it was a consistent change that would be okay and easy to deal with but it’s an inconsistent change. Sometimes people show up, and sometimes they don’t with little rhyme or reason, and the pattern is expected to continue throughout rainy season (which will go until the rain stops where it will start being cold season again).

This year the rainy season came a bit late (and by a bit I mean a solid month). Put together with the past two rainy seasons being less than spectacular this had some people worried, but now that it is solidly here people are cautiously optimistic and are saying “ca va aller”. It should be pretty smooth sailing unless the rainy season ends early.

But rain means, things are green, things get wet, things leak, and it is awesome.