Saturday, April 14, 2012

Ndiyan [rain]


It rained again today. I was sitting on the porch, reading Bill Speidel’s Seattle history. The sun had been coming and going, showing itself occasionally from behind passing clouds, encroaching on my shady position with each reappearance. Then there was thunder.

Children squealed. It was like when a truck drives through town: a couple deep booms as it clobbers the cobbles, children get excited, adults turn their heads but don’t leave their work, and then it’s over and all that’s left is dust and fading rumbles and clangs. Totally normal.

Two vaporous giants had taken over the sky where before patchy clouds had slid about. One, dark and looming overhead, the other, white and towering, almost confectionary, over the hills to the east. Blue sky shone between them. I quickly got out my bike and headed to the house under construction up on the hill; the porch has both a great view of the valley and a roof. As I left my compound, the rain was beginning to taptap tap the metal roofs.

From the vantage of the second-story porch I watched the first dark giant pass, showering the village. Soon it was gone, over the ridge, to make its fleeting trucklike appearance in the next village over. The rain lulled. I watched a baobab seed float slowly to the ground. The rain had dampened its surrounding tangle of tulle-like fibers, transforming it from a will-o-wisp to a badminton birdie. I took leave of the well-diggers working at the site with whom I had shared the shelter of the porch and continued up the hill. The sun was back, on my back, tracing my sharp shadow on the clean ground.

There are three sensations produced when the first rain in a while begins to fall. First is, of course, the smell. The smell is hard to describe but everyone knows it. It’s always the same, always wonderful, slightly dusty and moist at the same time, and incredibly clear. When it hasn’t rained in six months, this smell can linger for days.

The second is the sound, or rather a series of sounds. There is at first the sudden bustle as laundry is hauled in, as goats run bleating for cover, and as children remind their peers that ‘it’s raining!’ Then there is a lull. Not unearthly quiet like during and just after heavy snowfall, but a dampening, if you will, of all activities. People still talk, motorcycles still blast by, and some crickets still make their noises, but all of these things are perceived in the context of the falling water. The whole world is still there, but the rain smoothens and filters the sound, the auditory equivalent of looking through a screen door.

The third is sudden, subtle, incredible change in how the world looks. Daytime rain is not gloomy, grey, or dull. The sky is a bit less brilliant, but the difference is made up on the ground. New rain turns bricks into ORANGE bricks, dead grass into YELLOW dead grass, budding trees into GREEN budding trees, scorched earth into BLACK scorched earth, rocks and gravel into RED rocks and gravel, plastic pipes and tarps into BLUE plastic pipes and tarps. Where there was once a homogenous landscape, unified by dust and haze, there are now individual, important, components.

When I came back home, the next cloud had moved overhead. I stood at the railing of the porch for half an hour, watching the drips and the people.

In the mountains and high plains of Guinea, the rainy season and the dry season each occupy one half of the year. The last real rain fell in early November this season. The two storms we’ve had this week herald the coming change, but the dry season is not yet officially over. One or two or three showers in late March and April are normal, but their timing is critical. They must fall early enough that the plants in the fields will survive (irrigation is scarce here), and late enough that those who make their livelihood via baked-earth bricks don’t lose their whole muddy crop in a sudden downpour, before the final firing. And now, many Guineans will allow themselves to eat mangoes. The first mangoes ripened almost a month ago, but only now are they “properly washed,” and thus able to mature as they should. Many other Guineas don’t worry about whether their mangoes have been wetted or not, and start eating them as soon as they ripen.

The rainy season will truly have arrived in mid or late May. This fortunately coincides with the end of the school year. During heavy rainfall, the noise generated by the drops on the metal roof creates such a racket in the unceilinged classrooms that it’s not worthwhile to teach; no one wants to be yelled at (or yell) for two hours. Of course, the kids won’t go home; they’d get wet on the way there [or at least more wet than they do sitting in the classroom beneath the holey roof], so teacher and students alike will sit and wait. It makes sense to minimize this: final exams are scheduled for early June.

I made spicy salty oily vegetables over rice as the light inside my house went from dim to none. For some reason, the lightning here (rain always comes with lightning) is bluer, redder, purpler than what I’ve experienced elsewhere. The bolts of white that illuminate the dark dark night seem to have red edges or glows, though they only last an instant. Perhaps the clouds are lower in the sky, or there are more particulates in the air, or African Zeus has his bolts forged in crimson.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Voyage

Imagine the progeny of an arranged marriage between a covered wagon and a roller coaster:
Crawling up hills, plunging down the other side with the vehicle in neutral and motor shut off to conserve fuel, whipping through blind chicanes, the mismatched tires cling desperately to the terra infirma beneath. Four guys are on the roof, on top of the baggage, on top of the cargo net, strategically splayed so as to minimize their already vertiginous position. Pre-deadly passing manoeuvers test the limits of luck. The road is alternately Jarlsberg and Texas Chili, turning to Rocky Road during the rainy season. Inside the vehicle, the heater is on full blast to keep the engine a precious few degrees cooler, the stick-shift is actually a stick for shifting, the children are calm but don’t pack well, the bidon-cum-gastank fumes in the trunk, and dust settles in every fold like dry snow.  Miniscule motorcycles without mirrors ignore everything, one passenger in a helmet, the next in headphones, the third in a headwrap.  The baby is bareheaded.
This is overland travel in Guinea.
Plus, fuel is about $5/gal.