And The Dust Turns To Mud

Well the dry season has come to an end here in the West. Since December, there has been no rain, the sun had been shinning all day long, and it has been hot. Hot as in 80 plus degrees. I arrived in Uganda back in June during the dry season and arrived at site at the end of that dry season now I am sitting on my front porch listening to the rubble of the thunder over Kibale Forest making its way to the house. Half of the sky is bright blue the other is dark and ominous. So starts what I am told is the worse rainy season but heck everyone one said that about the last season so I have no idea. All I know is it will be wet. When I got back from Italy, I was so happy because I was not cold anymore and to be honest, I love the dry season. Minus the dust and smoke from bush burning. 

I found everyone I talked to was like ‘oh it is too hot’ or ‘oh there is too much dust’ well they said that about the rainy season ‘oh there is too much rain’ or ‘oh there is too much mud’ or ‘oh it is too cold.’ Guess you can’t please everyone. 

Prices for food have gone up and there has been a lot less supply in the markets so I have changed my diet to fit that which you really do when things are out of season. The trees and plants around the roads turned brown and red because of the dust and leafs started to fall from the tress and things turned brown. With the start of rainy season people are prepping their fields and there is an excitement of having rain again. Everything has turned a bright beautiful green again. We cleaned the rain tank we have yesterday. We dumped so much water but had to do it as the roof was covered in dust which got washed down into the tank with the rain (does not taste good), we filled all our jerrycans and buckets with water but had to waste a lot of water took almost an hour to drain. Now it will be our luck that we don’t get rain for a couple days.

The other night, my roommates and I sat out on our front porch watching the lightening and storms that were all around us. The sky filled with dust and smoke from bush burning turned the lightening a bright red, orange and yellow it was amazing. It was also a dry storm as well so that was really cool. A true African storm.

My favorite part of dry season has been riding motorcycles (I have a wavier) in and back from Fort and to schools as I would come back a nice color brown/red from all the dust even when wearing a helmet.

Now the clouds have come back. The weather again changes every 30 minutes; cloudy, sunny, cloudy, windy, sunny, rainy, hail, sunny, and so on. I hear that this one will last until around May but global warming is hitting this part of Africa hard so who knows when it will end. 

So lets raise a glass to the rain and drink it in.