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.