Rainy Season

(updated photos!)


I hear it has been raining a lot at home. Here too. At first the Ghanaians I asked weren’t specific about when actually the ‘rainy season’ was, but I can tell you it’s now: May/June. Interestingly during the Rainy Season it doesn’t rain every day and it rarely rains all day. What is more common are short quickly developed unbelievably strong downpours and then often bright sunshine. I should have been warned when the morning talk show on TV in early April had a segment on “What is the best make-up to wear in the rainy season?”. (It's important to know if you're caught in a downpour what make up will hold up?!)

If it rains and the next day is a school day it is very tricky to get to my classroom buildings (without sinking into the mud). Sometimes I’ve been known to take very roundabout routes to reach one of my rooms without sinking in-and sometimes I haven’t made it :). I noticed last week the kids have built sort of a ‘rock bridge’ that you can walk over the mud on. Imagine all sorts of fun and games that high schoolers can invent while walking on the rocks ;)

If it’s raining during class that presents a few other problems. One of my classrooms leaks-that’s the older one which has a dirt floor and that room also doesn’t have electricity so it gets very dark.
An advantage of the rainy season is that we have a few cool days. (under 90) Cloudy days are awesome. But there’s no rhyme or reason to these days. It will rain on and off one day and be cool, then the next day bright sun and 100. If you look on weather.com the forecast for Accra says the same thing everyday: scattered thunderstorms 60% 86 high… Last week I actually slept with my fan off. I think that’s only happened three times this year!
I had already planned to write this today when I went to sleep last night. Last night we had one of the most violent storms ever. The kind you can’t sleep through. My roof is tin (which doesn’t make the lightening very comforting) and the entire house shook with thunder and the torrential rains. I couldn’t sleep so I decided to take a picture out my front door. It’s hard to tell what you’re looking at but I thought it was artistic!
When I opened the door to take the picture I was surprised to see (my) three wild dogs (mentioned in an earlier blog) all curled up on my doormat in the corner of my porch shaking. Here they are sleeping a little more calmly during a lighter rain.


Of course with rain comes….potholes. Pot holes in Ghana aren’t filled with tar. I’ve seen a few filled with loose gravel but mostly they are filled with dirt. And you know what happens when dirt gets wet.

Sometimes I’ll see ‘road crews’, but more often than not, the way potholes get filled is this: A person (man/woman/older child) has a shovel and a bucket of dirt. They stand in the middle of the road and shovel dirt into the hole. As cars go by drivers tip the ‘filler’ 5-10 cents. If a driver doesn’t tip, the filler will either scream and shake a fist or (and I’ve seen this done) start digging the dirt OUT of the hole.

So I'll relish these cool evening because I know they too will soon end...

Speaking of end-Samuel comes back to Ghana from Rockville next week! The school year's over-wow. Not mine though, next week is mid-term break. I'll try to have an adventure to report about.....