Some Rainy Season

Sunday was our first real "day off" since getting here. We certainly haven't been swamped by any means but there have been visits out into the community and health worker training to observe nearly every day. So sleeping in today was pretty special.

After a late start we walked down the road to the Travelers Rest Guesthouse, an oasis of gardens and plush furniture and incredible pancakes. One of us ordered banana pancakes, the other got bacon pancakes. Not bacon AND pancakes. Bacon pancakes. We've heard that all the meals here are pretty fantastic and the dining room is cool and well-appointed, so it might become a "treat yourself" locale when we're in dire need.

After breakfast, we finished our coffee on the back patio and worked on updating lesson plans for an upcoming Village Health Worker training session. The sun was shining and a Hadada Ibis (which we would identify as such in the pages of Birds of East Africa) was rooting around in the wet grass. The ibis and we got a lot done that morning and around 1 o'clock Katrina and I walked back down the homeward road. The ibis found other soils for rooting.

The rainy season is no joke. In other words, when we saw great swirls of grey clouds overhead on our walk we knew there was no question of what was to come. The day before, we had raced a dark and terrible storm from the corner store all the way back to our house, reaching the porch only seconds before the skies opened wide. This Sunday afternoon was shaping up similarly.

We hustled up the driveway and dropped our bags inside just as all the corrugated tin roofs in our compound began to come alive with the drumming of raindrops. Soon hail, half-an-inch or more in diameter, was bouncing up to our front door. The sloped awning that protected our porch from lighter, more-or-less vertical downpours was of no use against this omni-directional onslaught. Water -- liquid and solid -- was assaulting us from its gaseous state miles above. But it's not a storm; it's a season, and it's no joke.

Rain was off and on (but mostly on) for the rest of the day and power was on and off (but mostly off). Both of these might end up being fairly common features of the rainy season. But being housebound on a Sunday was just what we needed to rearrange our living room a little and make Katrina's famous sweet potato stew (prepared with the local-est ingredients we've ever had).

Evening was peaceful. The sky had settled down and the setting sun was peeking through one small corner. Mt. Muhavura had never looked clearer or more prominent and we stood on the porch admiring it with our neighbour Amit, an attending doctor at the hospital. Every few minutes we heard the cheers of a far-off crowd of people. Maybe two soccer teams and their fans releasing the nervous energy pent up from an afternoon of rain delays.