From dust to mud

2-23-09 6:30 pm

You haven’t heard it rain until you’ve heard it rain on a tin roof. It sounds like a continuously crashing wave at the beach…

I’ve been going out to the nine elementary schools ACCES runs the past few weeks, and out in the countryside, everyone’s got their fields ploughed and ready to plant corn. I wonder if this downpour signals the start of the rainy season… I think it usually starts in mid-March. It also could just be a late afternoon shower, like the ones we had everyday the first week I was here. I welcome the rain as it’s so hot in the ACCES office in the afternoon, I can hardly work. It’s also been really dusty.

However, as I sit here inside my host family’s house, having my Cadbury’s “drinking chocolate” for Tea, I have to wonder how Kakamega deals with the Long Rains, since so much of life here is carried out on the streets and in the open…

What happens to our three chickens when it pours like this? Where will they go?

What about my host parents, who aren’t home from work yet? My host mom takes a motorbike-taxi a half hour to and from work every day – is she getting soaked? I think my host dad walks. What about everyone who takes boda bodas? Are you supposed to carry an umbrella? Just get soaked?

What about all the mud-dung/ structures everywhere? Do the walls hold up?
What about the puppies at my fellow intern’s host family’s house? Dogs are NOT let inside here, so I guess they’ll just find a shed or barn to camp out in?

What about the all the women who line the road and sell used clothing and random kitchen supplies on my way home? Will they have to stop selling all of rainy season? Or is it so predictable that they know when to pack up?

What about the gang of street boys? Are the trash piles going to get too wet to sort through? Where do they sleep anyways? There’s another intern who just got here who is going to join an org that works with street kids, so I’ll find out soon.

Oh, just figured out what the chickens are up to – I can see them out the window and they’re having a field day in the grass, getting soaked, looking at the sky. Go figure.