The Rainy Season

A while back I posted on what the dry season was like here in Nanga. Right now we're in the rainy season. Generally, it's cloudy in the morning and occasionally rains and then gets sunny in the afternoon. Some days it stays pretty cloudy for most of the day.

There are two types of cloudy here. There's hazy-whitish-gray-cloudy, which usually means it's probably not going to rain, or if it does rain, it will be pretty light. These are the clouds that are usually present in the morning.

Then there's menacing-angry-black-cloudy, which usually show up in the late afternoon and means the skies are about to open. This can happen fast. It can go from a sunny day with clear blue skies to menacing-angry-black-cloudy in an hour. When you see them gathering, you get in doors quick. Usually big storms like this are accompanied by plenty of thunder and lightening so it's hard to miss them coming. (Big storms also hit in the middle of the night a lot.)

When menacing-angry-black-cloudy does turn to rain, it rains HARD. Heavy, pounding, driving rain. Since my house (and most other houses here) have tin roofs, this make storms here LOUD. Throw in the thunder and there are times I wake up in the middle of the night.

When it rains like this, everything shuts down. It's funny. Before I came here my mother (who was presumably worried I'd get wet and cath cold) convinced me to buy a "rain suit" - waterprooof jacket and pants. I also brought a pair of umbrellas. I have yet to wear the rain suit, or, even just the jacket. I've used the umbrellas a few times when I had to go out, but normally they gather dust. Nobody here has much rain gear. Groundskeepers who have to work in the mud have boots but that's about it. Lots of women have umbrellas but they use them on sunny days to keep the sun off of them.

No, when it rains hard here people just stay indoors. Students and teachers don't go to class. Offices and stores open late or close early. If people are too far from home to get back they'll stay at work or find a bar to sit in until the storms pass. And they usually do pass fairly quickly. I've adopted this habit. If I see it's going to rain I just go home and wait until the storm passes. Since I live on campus this is easy. If I happen to have class, well, I still have the umbrellas and a pair of totes my mom sent me.

Since there aren't many paved roads around here, this means lots and lots of mud. The rainy season's corollary to the dry season's omnipresent dust is lots and lots of mud. Most people here do not wear shoes indoors to avoid tracking in mud or dust (depending on the season). The mud can be annoying, but I think it's far better to just have to clean a bit of mud off the floor or your shoes than to have to try to clean off the layers of dust that settle on everything during the dry season.

The foliage has also become very lush. In spots where there was bare earth a few months ago in the dry season, there are now four or five feet of vegetation. Combined with the absence of dust I think it makes the countryside much prettier.

As I mentioned previously, power is better overall during the rainy season since a lot of Cameroon's power is hydroelectric. During the dry season the water levels in the rivers drop and SONEL (the power company) starts cutting power since there's not enough to go around. This is less of a problem during the rainy season. The power does get knocked out a lot during big storms, but it's usually restored fairly quickly (knock on wood). During the dry season we were going for days or even weeks at a time without power. Now we usually only lose power for a few hours or maybe a day.

The biggest downside I've seen so far is that all the extra water means lots of extra mosquitoes. Lots and lots. Lots of other bugs too. These days I usually smell like a strange mix of deet and hydrocortisone cream.