Posted tagged ‘rainy season’

« home page
« Older Entries

“Never forsake your motherland.”

May 8, 2023

Today is lovely, bright and warm. The sky is so blue it almost defies description. It is 65° and will get warmer as the day gets older. My windows are open. It is time to blow away the winter and fill the house with the sweet smells of spring. I am glad for today as tomorrow will be cooler.

When I lived in Ghana, my home, Bolgatanga, was almost as far away from the capital as you could get. I knew before I left staging in Philadelphia where I would be posted because the remote postings were the first filled. If you stayed in Accra for a while and then you were taken to Bolga, you’d think you were in a different country. The lush green of southern Ghana had disappeared and been replaced by the open savannah grasslands of the north. Bolga had one rainy season, a magical time when the brown fields came alive with green shoots and grasses, when the dusty roads were hardened by the rain. During the dry season, my lips chapped and my heels split from the dryness. The water was rationed, often turned off for a day or two so I took bucket baths. My students cleaned the school compound every morning regardless of the season then spent the day in classes. At night, they often visited me.

I was closest to my FraFra students. I sometimes think it was because they were from Bolga and were as resilient as the fields. The dry season for them was just another part of life to be endured while the rainy season was to be celebrated. The FraFra dances were exuberant, energetic, with quick movements filled with joy. Women traditionally danced the pogne with moving arms and stepping legs. Often the dancers were accompanied by clapping and singing. I tried a few times and almost fell over each time.

I knew, on my first trip back to Bolga in 40 years, I’d find my FraFra students, and I did on my first night back to Bolga. The word was spread that I had returned and students came to my hotel. I recognized them all. The only two missing were Franciska Issaka who was living here and Grace Awae who was in Accra. I was so sorry to miss both of them. When I got home, Grace called me, and we reconnected. It was the same with Franciska, and she came to visit. It was amazing to me that one of my students was in my house.

On the next visit, a year later, Grace met me at the airport, and we spent every day together. It was the same on the third visit, the one with Bill and Peg. Grace and Bea Issaka sat with us every night at our hotel. It all seemed so natural sitting at a table in Bolga chatting with friends.

I felt at home in Bolga each time I returned. My feelings, my love for Bolga and for my students, had never left me. They flooded my heart. I always think I got the best posting in the country among the most amazing people.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

“For there we loved, and where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts…”

February 9, 2023

We are in the midst of a heat wave, that is if you compare the temperature to last week’s when it was around 8°. Right now it is 46°. Even though we’re socked in by clouds spread across the sky I’m going closet hunting for my Hawaiian shirt. I don’t think I need sunscreen, but I’ll keep it around just in case.

Yesterday was an amazing day for me. I got to play the newest book at uke, and my finger barely hurt which is a great thing as next week I have 4 uke events: practice, a lesson, a mid-week concert and another on the weekend at the mall. I’m thinking three of those might be enough for my crooked, barely bending finger. Yesterday’s second event made me cry. I was bemoaning my fate of a dead TV to someone I don’t know all that well. When we meet, we usually chat so the TV came up in conversation. I told her how I compensate with my iPad. Why didn’t I buy a new one? I explained I was being given a TV which best fit my budget. She asked how much one would cost. I had no idea as the dead TV was one of the first HD sets and was massively expensive. It worked well all these years and deserves its eternal rest. She handed me a check for $500. I thanked her and refused the kind offer. She said she was paying it forward in honor of a relative who had passed. I couldn’t refuse. That’s when I cried. That’s when I got my hug. The third and culminating event was a package from my sister and brother-in-law congratulating me on the end of my PT, four months after the surgery. It was filled with cookies from Cheryl’s. I ate two.

Where I lived in Ghana was way up country. It was the poorest part of the country and the region with the most extreme temperatures. Right now it is 101°, a dry 101°, but soon enough the dry heat will disappear and the humidity will start. The rainy season isn’t far away. My students, on one of my return trips, told me they were amazed I lived in Bolga as many Ghanaians would not choose to live there, but a white woman did. I didn’t tell them I had been posted there even before I got to Ghana. I knew nothing of Bolga until mid-way through training when I spent a week there meeting the principal, checking out my town and what I needed for my house. It was the rainy season.

It didn’t take long for Bolga to feel like home. I got waves and greetings everywhere I went. I fell in love with my town and was so very thankful to have been chosen to live there. That’s what I told my former students. They said they knew that.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 4 Comments

“Vexed sailors cursed the rain, for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.”

July 13, 2020

It is a new day but seemingly the same day. The small breeze, the clouds and the humidity were yesterday and are now today. Henry and I had business outside. He did his. I did mine by collecting the last two chair covers and bringing them inside. I had left them out to dry. They had, but rain is coming. All the covers are piled in the kitchen. The storage bins are under the deck maybe. They could be downstairs. I’ll look tomorrow. As for today, I need to go out, two stops, maybe three if the rain hasn’t yet come.

Standing out in a rainstorm was one of my favorite things when I was a kid. Downpours were the best. I’d stand there with my arms spread, my face to the rain. I’d get soaked. Sadly, downpours never lasted long. The sun always made a comeback. I’d stay outside and dry.

In the dry season, everything turned brown all around me. I walked on hard ground cemented by the dryness. My lips chapped. My feet became calloused. I used a lot of lotion. I adjusted, but I hardly liked the dry season. It was so hot every day. Its only saving graces were the bugs disappeared, and the hot air was actually dry. We kept eye. In April, the humidity started. The rain wasn’t far behind. The first rains were downpours thicker than I’d ever seen. The dry ground had rivulets. The rain on the tin classroom roof was so loud I couldn’t be heard. I used the blackboard to teach. Sometimes I got soaked running to class. I didn’t mind so much. It rained most days. Everything in the fields turned green. The women walking to market were hidden by the tall grass. Millet grew high in fields behind my house. The rainy season, though, didn’t seemed to last near enough. In September, the rain came less frequently. By mid-October it had stopped. It was the dry season again. I had come full circle my first year in Ghana.

Here, the rain can come any season. I like it best in summer.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

“Let us keep the dance of rain our fathers kept and tread our dreams beneath the jungle sky.”

April 13, 2019

I was between asleep and awake when I heard the rain. It was dripping from the roof to the overhang below my window. I stayed in bed just a bit to listen. When I got downstairs and let Henry out, I was surprised to see the rain was mere drops, one by one. I hardly got wet running for the papers.

The sky is still cloudy, but the rain has since stopped.

This morning it is Barracuda, a film made in 1978. The director, the writer and the star are all the same person, Wayne Crawford. I guessed the decade of the movie before I looked. The houses are all low slung, a Brady Bunch sort of look. The men’s bathing suits are those striped gym sort of shorts. Women are in bikinis but not so skinny as now. When the barracudas strike, the water is roiled and all you can see is blood, not so special effects. My favorite scene so far is of the mouth of the barracuda with a leg sticking out.

When I was a kid, a rainy Saturday was the worst. I’d beg my mother to let me ride my bike anyway. I usually lost that argument. All four of us stuck inside drove my mother crazy. If I had a book, I’d find a quiet spot and read the afternoon away, but no book meant boredom. TV was the only other diversion but even that got boring. I’d keep checking out the windows hoping the rain had stopped. If it had stopped, I was out the door with bike in hand. Riding after a rainstorm was great fun. I’d ride through every puddle I could, and I’d watch the fan of water spread out from each side of my front tire. I’d raise my legs off the pedals so I wouldn’t get wet.

One of my friends gave me a fold up umbrella as a going away present before I left for Ghana. It was the rainy season there. During the first week of training, I used the umbrella on my walk to language class. When the class was finished, I sat out of the rain to watch it for a while. When I left to go back to my room, I forgot my umbrella. Once I realized, I hurried back. The umbrella was gone. I was upset, but in the long run, it didn’t matter. I never saw anyone carry a rain umbrellas. People either got wet or found a place out of the rain. I sat in a kiosk once, invited by the owner. I was an object of curiosity. Every person walking by looked and I suppose wondered why the white woman was in the kiosk. I always said, “Barka da yamma,” good afternoon in Hausa to each of them. I always got smiles.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: 8 Comments

“What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.”

September 1, 2018

Today is again glorious, cool and dry. The sun is strong. The sky is blue and unmarred by clouds. I’m going to sit on the deck and take it all in because by Sunday the ugly humidity will be back.

Today is the meteorological end of summer, and Labor Day is the unofficial end but none of that matters to Mother Nature. She will continue to blast us with heat and humidity until fall can finally work its way past her. I’m hoping it will be soon. Fall is my favorite season.

In Ghana we had the dry season and the rainy season. I lived where the dry season was hotter than any other place in Ghana, but now it is the rainy season there so the temperature in Bolga, my other home town, is the lowest it will be all year. It has been in the high 70’s and the mid 80’s there, and rain has fallen just about every day. It is odd to see it cooler in West Africa than it is here.

During my early Peace Corps days, I missed fall, the snow at Christmas and the freshness of spring. I missed flowers. But the longer I lived there, the more I came to love the changes in Ghana’s weather. The rains came intermittently in September. The fields and grasses began to turn brown. Every day seemed hotter than the previous one. By the end of September, it was the high 80’s. In October it was the high 90’s. The worst months, February through April, usually reached 100˚ or more. My favorite month was December. The days were hot, but the nights were cold in comparison. I needed a blanket. It was Bolga’s snow at Christmas. In May the rains started. The grasses turned green. The fields were filled with the young shoots of millet, maize and sorghum. The trees were green with leaves. It was spring, Ghanaian style. The market was overloaded with fresh fruits and vegetables. The tomatoes were luscious.

It has been a long, long while since I lived in Ghana so I have forgotten the horrific heat, those days over 100˚.  Back then I seldom complained. I took my cold shower late, jumped into bed and fell asleep. Now I complain and moan and turn on the air conditioner.

That’s the way it was there, and now that’s the way it is here.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 6 Comments

“Daffodils are yellow trumpets of spring”

March 9, 2018

If this is a test of my sanity, I am on shaky ground. In Ghana there was a rainy season and a dry season. I knew what to expect and around when to expect it. My friends and I, during the dry season, would look at the sky and wonder if it was going to rain. That was a joke of sorts. We knew the rain wouldn’t come until April. The sun would beat down and dry everything until then. The ground became dust, blown and whirled by the winds from the desert, the harmattan winds. Our lips cracked from the dryness, but it wasn’t unexpected. We were ready for all that heat and no rain.

I haven’t seen the sun in days. The clouds are darker now, a bit more menacing. I need the sun. I want it to be so bright outside I have to squint my eyes. I want to stand on the deck and be warm. My patience is almost gone. I want to scream, “No more! No More!”

Today I have to go to the dump. Gracie would have loved the trip.

My laundry is back to its usual spot, leaning against the cellar door. My plan is to do it today before it grows and takes on a life of its own. That’s what happened the last time. Had I been a character in a Disney movie, my laundry would have been singing and dancing. I’m picturing a conga line of shirts followed by a line of pants doing the can can and singing a catchy tune as they make their way to the washing machine.

My house is nice and clean. Roseana and Lee came yesterday. My contribution was lifting my legs so Lee could vacuum under them. He even put all the trash and recycling bags into the trunk for today’s dump run. I also have a couple of other stops. I have streamlined my to do’s so I waste only a single day.

My garden doesn’t mind the gray days. It still grows. I check it every morning and every morning I notice more and more green shoots have been appearing in my front garden. I see daffodils joining the already blooming crocus or croci if we use Latin’s second declension masculine plural for words ending in us. I had four years of Latin in high school, a feat of no small dimension.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 14 Comments

“There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”

June 5, 2017

Last night was a long one. It rained the whole night. Gracie and I went out at about ten. I got a bit wet and so did she. I was still wide awake an hour or so later so I watched a Hallmark movie. Yes, it had a happy ending despite arson, theft and a murder. At one, after the movie, I roused Gracie to take her out again. She got to the door and backed away, but I was insistent. I should have paid more attention. It was a deluge, but she needed out for the night so I pushed her out the front door with me unhappily behind her. Though I ran as quickly into the house as I could, I got soaked anyway and so did she.

This morning at about eight, Gracie was restless, and she woke me up. We went outside. It was wet but not rainy. It was cold. We came back inside and I went back to bed, or back to couch to be more specific. I snuggled under the covers and the cozy warmth lulled me to sleep. Gracie joined me. I woke up at ten. Gracie was still asleep so I rousted her to get her outside. I led her to the yard then ran inside the house and made coffee. I read the papers and had two cups of coffee. It was a leisurely morning.

Rain is expected again today so the sky is mighty dark. What a surprise! I have some errands, and it is chilly enough for Gracie to come.

When I was a kid, rainy days always seemed different than other days. My classroom seemed quieter. The rustle of papers sounded loud. The rain on the windows caught my attention as the drops slid down the glass and disappeared. The day seemed longer. Lunch was inside, but we didn’t really care. The rain seemed to drain our energy.

In Ghana, I loved the rain. After the dry season ended, every rainstorm was a bit of a miracle. The brown turned green. The dust became soil. Trees sprouted leaves. The fallow fields came alive with the tiny shoots of corn and millet. Rivers sometimes overflowed their banks. I always felt the rain and never minded getting wet.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 12 Comments

“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”

January 26, 2017

“Rain, rain go away come again another day.” When I was young, I thought this nursery rhyme had a bit of magic about it. If I sang it enough times, the sun would reappear, and I could go out to play. I’m singing it now with the same hope. It has been raining since Monday. The sky alternates between angry clouds and greyish white clouds. The rain is sometimes heavy and other times just a fine mist, spitting rain my mother use to call it. I saw the sun for an hour or so the other day. It gave me a bit of hope.

I do a couple of house chores every day. Yesterday I watered plants, changed my bed and paid my bills. I haven’t gone anywhere, haven’t wanted or needed to. Tomorrow, though, I have a list of errands so Gracie and I will hit the road. Maybe if I cross my fingers and wish for sun, it might work.

When I was young, I had snow boots but not rain boots. Nobody I knew had them either. I also didn’t have a raincoat or an umbrella. I always got wet. It was the usual thing.

During the rainy season in Ghana, I got wet. Sometimes I had to run from my house to the classroom block when the rain was heavy, but I didn’t mind. The rain was always welcome. I’d even shop in the market while it was raining, but if the rain got really heavy, I’d stand in the doorway of a building or inside a small kiosk until it lightened or stopped. The rain was a gift to make crops grow.

I love the sound of rain. Even when I was kid, I loved the rain beating on my bedroom window. In Ghana the rain on the tin roof of my classroom was sometimes so loud that I couldn’t teach, but I could fall asleep listening to the rain. Its steady beat was comforting in a way, amost like music, maybe even a lullaby.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 10 Comments

“You either get the point of Africa or you don’t. What draws me back year after year is that it’s like seeing the world with the lid off.”

August 14, 2016

Big surprise: today is hot, already 88˚, and combined with the 70% humidity it feels like 100˚. I was on the deck earlier checking the plants. They have to be watered again, but I’ll wait until later in the day hoping it will be cooler.

When I arrived in Ghana for Peace Corps training, I knew nothing about Africa. The books and mimeographed materials from Peace Corps didn’t do much in helping me understand where I was going. Knowing there were two seasons, rainy and dry, had me picturing what rainy and dry look like here, that was all I had for reference. Descriptions of Ghanaian culture were like excerpts from a geography book. I read about the different tribes and where they lived. The country was divided into regions, a bit like our states.

Before we left Philadelphia for Ghana, I found out I was going to be posted in the Upper Region, only a place on the map to me. The Upper Region spanned all the way across the whole top section of Ghana from east to west. I was to be posted in its capital, Bolgatanga.

When I went to Bolga for a week during training, it was the rainy season when everything is green, and the market is filled with all sorts of fruit and vegetables. I figured that would be Bolga all the time. I was totally wrong.

When training was over, I made my way home, to Bolga. I stopped overnight in Kumasi, about the halfway mark. I always added an overnight so I could visit friends along the way. The trip from Accra to Kumasi was a wonderful train ride. From Kumasi to Bolga was a bus or lorry ride, always hot and always crammed with people.

Bolga was still in the rainy season when I moved into my house. The rains stopped a month or two later. Everything dried. The ground split. Nothing stayed green. My lips and the heels of my feet split. I walked on tiptoes. I learned to take bucket baths. My meals never varied. Breakfast was two eggs cooked in groundnut oil and two pieces of toast. Lunch was fruit. Dinner was beef cooked in tomato broth, a necessity to make the meat tender, or chicken. Yams were the side dish, sometimes in a mash and sometimes cooked with the meat. I always drank water except in the morning when I drank instant coffee with canned milk.

I never minded the same meals or the dry season. I was astonished every day that I was  living in Africa. I loved Bolga whether rainy or dry. My friends and I would often look at the sky and say it looked like rain. That was a joke, and we never got tired of it. We knew the rain was months away. If we found something new in the market, it was cause for celebration. If we didn’t, it didn’t matter.

In about five weeks, I’ll be back home in Bolga.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 9 Comments

“Nothing reminds us of an awakening more than rain.”

April 12, 2016

Today I started early with a nine o’cock meeting. When it had finished, I went to the bank, the post office and the grocery store. I got home after eleven and had another cup of coffee while I read my second newspaper and my e-mail. It was while I was reading the local news I realized how tired I was so I decided to take a morning nap. Gracie must have felt the same way because she joined me upstairs. We just woke up. Gracie, though, is now back to napping, and I’m still tired.

When I looked out the window this morning, I saw a cloudy, ugly sort of day. When I went outside to leave, I was surprised at how warm it was. My car said 55˚, almost balmy for this time of year especially with no sun. I knew it was supposed to rain during some part of the day and it did just as I arrived home. All I would have needed was four more minutes so I could have gotten the dog, my packages and me inside without getting wet.

The easiest way to describe the weather is to say it’s a rainy day, but that’s just the beginning. What sort of rain? All rain storms don’t fall from the sky in the same way, but they do have two things in common: they get you wet and all the rain ends up in the same place, down. My favorite description of rain is one my mother used to use. She’d say it was spitting rain, and I knew exactly what she meant. The earlier rain I got stuck in was heavy. My mother would have called it a deluge. Sometimes rain is torrential. Other times it rains cats and dogs. Sprinkling is the lightest of rains. Coming down in buckets is just the opposite. I remember the rain falling on the long windows when I was in elementary school. The drops would hit the windows then drizzle down until they disappeared. When the wind is great, the rain falls sideways. Some storms have pounding rain. They are probably my least favorite because I always get so wet.

My favorites of all storms are in Ghana at the start of the rainy season. After months of no rain the sky turns almost black and the clouds darken the day. All of a sudden the wind and the rain start with unbelievable ferocity. Trees bend under the onslaught. Lightning strikes jaggedly across the sky. I once saw it hit the ground. The dry, hard earth can’t absorb the rain so it forms rivulets which run and make furrows on the ground. Sometimes the rain is so magnificent I can’t catch my breath from the awe of it. I stand and watch until the storm wears itself out and the sun comes back. I know the dry season is over and it will rain just about every day, but it is this first rain which I’ll remember.

Categories: Musings
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 12 Comments

« Older Entries
%d bloggers like this: