We keep thinking the rainy season will end, but after every sunny week, the clouds settle in for the weekend, the temperature drops, the snails and slugs take their slimy morning strolls, and tennis lessons are cancelled again.
Sometimes it can feel like fall when the sky is bright blue and there's a chill. Fall is my favorite season, but it doesn't really exist here - neither does summer, winter or spring as I know them. Mid-August to mid-October is the hottest time, but temperatures range from the mid-50s to the mid-80s, and it's dry. Can't really call that summer, can you?
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| Pecan tree in August |
That "hot" 8 weeks directly follows winter which is confusing (mid-May to mid-August) when it can drop to freezing at night but get up to 70 in the day. Indoor heating doesn't exist here, so for me, winter is most convincingly winter. We have a fire every night in the fireplace those months - even now - then in June, we'll escape to the heat & humidity of the States in summer.
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| Pecan tree in March |
The rainy season is the longest season, I'm just realizing. It's practically half the year here. The bush grass gets twelve-feet high, and everything grows and grows and grows. The city is transformed into a lush, damp tropics. What would normally be a summer, given the Earth's tilt, is kept cool by the rains. It never reaches 80. You start the day with a fleece robe and furry slippers. By noon, if the sun's out, you're wearing flip-flops and a cotton skirt.
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| Lush driveway |
This is our first entire rainy season. We've been in Zimbabwe for a year now - a year, 3 months, and 2 days to be exact. On the one hand, it doesn't seem so long ago that I welcomed the new green of the rainy season. However, the prospect of having to pull more putse fly larvae out of my 4-year-old daughter's leg has reduced my tolerance of the damp to nil. The rain may now cease.
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On antibiotics. Feeling fine. Leg looking better.
Doctor says there may be 9 more to come out. :(
They are currently being smothered to death with an ointment and will be coming to the surface in the next day or so. We'll see. |
We will be buying a clothes dryer for those of you reconsidering your trip here based on this latest story of an African nuisance (which lays its eggs in damp clothes drying on the line - thus the need to iron everything).
Side note: does anyone remember how blond Eliza's hair used to be? I keep telling David that Miles used to be blond when he was a baby, and that upon returning to the States everyone commented on how dark his hair became. (Can someone back me up?)
