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It's the 1st of May and, like clockwork, it has arrived! The rainy season is here, arriving with a real bang (or a hundred!) in the middle of the night and completely and utterly scaring me out of my wits!
I have never, ever seen or heard anything like it, I honestly felt like I was in the middle of the apocalypse!! I was rudely awoken from my happy and peaceful heat-induced slumber at daft o'clock in the pitch black of night by a wind that was so ferocious it sounded like it was going to blow the roof right off. Frozen in my pretty little bed I took a few moments to attempt to understand what was actually happening, where I was, and who I was actually as I had been dreaming that deeply. When I finally got that sorted I leant over to switch off the light that was flickering on and off like it was trying to induce me into an epileptic fit, only to realise that it wasn't my light, but flashes of lightening coming from outside. For a while I didn't dare move, I just hid under my sarong (a flimsy excuse for a duvet) and mossy net trying carefully to remember what I read about surviving a tornado in my 'survival of extremes' book (a kind and very thoughtful gift from a colleague at the university). My curtains billowing like fat ghosts dancing at my window and strange shadows flitting across the walls due to the erratic and insane lightening flashing across the sky, I felt like I was in some kind of a scary movie. It was, for a brief moment, kind of cool.
Realising that the clattering of noise I could hear was actually coming from my 'breezeway' (now more like 'tornado-way') I decided I ought to get out of bed and investigate the chaos and destruction, and so tip-toed nervously and peeped out into the hallway where I found a whole bundle of my things spinning around in the wind. Gathering them up and heading back into my room, I noticed that the lightening was pink, blue purple, a whole array of spectacular colours, and so I watched mesmerised as it lit up the sky and the whole neighbourhood in a technicolour show that would make Joseph green with envy.
Then came the thunder, so loud and so angry that I was somehow compelled to hurriedly get dressed into my combats and trainers and grab my phone and door-keys. Where exactly I was planning on going I have no idea. When it dawned on me that I was probably safer inside the house than out of it I decided to be brave and attempt to watch the storm from my widow. What surprised me the most was that I was not met with a scene of destruction, but that everything around, all the thatched roofs, the corrugated tin, the rusty old window shutters, even the electricity lines was standing still and strong and tall, powerful against even this monster of a storm. Wow.
And so it came, the heavy, stern, severe 'do not mess with me', 'I'll be here for some time', 'don't even think about going anywhere' rain - pounding so hard and so fast on my tin roof that I honestly thought it would drill huge holes in it! The din was deafening and my heart was beating so fast... under the bed, that's it, that's my strategy! I didn't actually do that, but it was definitely the next move on my action plan.
It must have rained for at least 4 hours, absolutely hammering it down non-stop. Eventually my heart slowed from a speed train to a toy drum, and somehow, after afew of those hours, I managed to fall back asleep.
When I woke in the morning the whole place looked so different. I expected floods, but it seems the ground was so thirsty that it just drank it all up!
Funny thing was that when I got to work that morning, my colleagues just laughed and said that was only a medium storm Medium?!!! Oh dear.
So, the rains have brought change, and it's been amazing to see the difference that this season is already bringing...
Green is here!! I couldn't believe that after just one storm grass came sprouting up around the house, and plants and flowers have started to shoot up. Everything that was dry and yellow is now being replaced by green and growth. Even the leaves on the trees are sparkling like they've had a wash and a wax, and even the cows and sheep are having a good old munch enjoying the pastures new.
The sauna environment is now becoming a steam room as huge baths of steamy moisture rise up throughout as the sun beats down on the soggy sand below. Goodbye dry season, hello humid season - frizzy hair ahoy!
People are 'up and doing' (A popular phrase of the Ghanaians for some strange reason, the equivalent of our 'up and about'). There was a flurry of activity the morning after the first storm, as people began to dig waterways around their houses, fix their roofs and doors, and finish off the last of their building projects before the real rains kick in.
The sowing has begun! People are now seriously and purposefully working on the land. Every patch of grass around my neighbourhood, every acre that the eye can see when travelling around the different communities, all are being prepared for sowing and planting the crops that will, if they grow well, secure the survival (at least food-wise) of many families for the rest of the year.
The mossies are out! And boy does my tennis ball sized ankle know about it. That mossy must have been a keen one - three bites he gave me and it's been swollen and itching like crazy for days!
Wellie-type things are for sale in the market, and people are wearing hats and coats (!), well, some people wore hats and coats anyway even in the hot season which has always been a baffling and humorous sight here (especially the brightly coloured bobble hats!), but now people are celebrating the 'cool'. Colleagues have begun wandering around commenting on how lovely and cool the weather is now. It's what? I'm not sure about that - I'm still flipping boiling!
I have had my first cold shower though! Woooo hooo! How refreshing. I just stood there laughing at having goosebumps and trying to remember what it feels like in the cold rain at home....hmmm... nope somehow try as I might I just can't remember that feeling! J
With love from stormy rainy Northern Ghana.
xxxx This is obviously not my photo...I was far too busy worrying about survival than where my camera was :)
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