I got mauled by the rain today. A 40 meter roundtrip dash to the French teacher and back (to ask her to teach the kindergarteners in my classroom instead of hers so they wouldn't have to walk in the rain) left me a sodden, demoralized mess. I dropped by mud-wrecked sandals by the door and borrowed a swimming towel from one of my students.
While my children were were occupied with French songs, I was shivering, indecent in the bathroom while my clothes hung to dry on the towel rack. After my brief sabbatical ended, I spent the rest of the day damp and barefoot.
At lunch the little girl I refer to as the UN Interpreter approached me and said in low tones, "For one thing, you have no shoes on. And first of all, your leg is dirty."
Monday, December 13, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
It's Time
The rainy season is here, even though as I type right now with blinding sunbeams slanting through the spaces in my curtains, it is hard to believe. But when the storms sweep in, walking becomes more like swimming, and the pounding sound of rain on the roof shatters any concentration I once had.
Last weekend it rained so long and so hard, that, I stayed in bed for days, reading book after book, emerging from my mosquito netting only to make zucchini fritters and look out the window.
Our campus has turned technicolor green and the running trails are overgrown with bush. The mosquitos are out in thick clouds and the Nairobi eyes or acid bugs I have been hearing about have started to emerge (they land on your skin and when you attempt to brush them off they excrete a rash-producing acid). Meanwhile the black flies have been retreating and spend the last moments of their season crashing kamikaze style against my eyeballs, or in the case of one, in the back of my throat as it rode it on a gulp of mid-run oxygen. It's wings beat damply against my uvula for several minutes before curling up and dying yet refusing to be swallowed. The cockroaches drowning beneath my leaking roof routinely crawl out from between my walls, flip onto their backs and die a slow, leg-wiggling death.
Mango trees which dot our campus are a truly generous thing, especially after the rains start. But high up in the trees, the most unreachable fruits turn golden, then rot, before falling dozens of feet to the ground. These are known with a mix of wonder and fear as mango bombs. It is only one reason why it is dangerous to walk under mango trees. The other is the slime underfoot, slick and emitting the rotten mango smell of sewage and vinegar. In my own garden, which once gave weeks of bountiful salads, the tomatoes first began growing to the size of my face and before turning red, dropping off the vine with rot, or else growing to the size of marbles, turning a freakish, speckled pattern and dropping off the vine in rot.
The enormous snails creep up my steps in the damp evenings leaving behind trails of slime for me to find when I come home at night. I have stepped on one in the dark and the sensation of my flip flopped foot cracking open the shell and sliding on the rubbery body was more than a little disgusting.
And when the sun peaks through after hours of rain, the dirt path in front of my door is clogged with lizards rejuvenating in the brief and brilliant sunshine, which sounds pretty good to me.
Last weekend it rained so long and so hard, that, I stayed in bed for days, reading book after book, emerging from my mosquito netting only to make zucchini fritters and look out the window.
Our campus has turned technicolor green and the running trails are overgrown with bush. The mosquitos are out in thick clouds and the Nairobi eyes or acid bugs I have been hearing about have started to emerge (they land on your skin and when you attempt to brush them off they excrete a rash-producing acid). Meanwhile the black flies have been retreating and spend the last moments of their season crashing kamikaze style against my eyeballs, or in the case of one, in the back of my throat as it rode it on a gulp of mid-run oxygen. It's wings beat damply against my uvula for several minutes before curling up and dying yet refusing to be swallowed. The cockroaches drowning beneath my leaking roof routinely crawl out from between my walls, flip onto their backs and die a slow, leg-wiggling death.
Mango trees which dot our campus are a truly generous thing, especially after the rains start. But high up in the trees, the most unreachable fruits turn golden, then rot, before falling dozens of feet to the ground. These are known with a mix of wonder and fear as mango bombs. It is only one reason why it is dangerous to walk under mango trees. The other is the slime underfoot, slick and emitting the rotten mango smell of sewage and vinegar. In my own garden, which once gave weeks of bountiful salads, the tomatoes first began growing to the size of my face and before turning red, dropping off the vine with rot, or else growing to the size of marbles, turning a freakish, speckled pattern and dropping off the vine in rot.
The enormous snails creep up my steps in the damp evenings leaving behind trails of slime for me to find when I come home at night. I have stepped on one in the dark and the sensation of my flip flopped foot cracking open the shell and sliding on the rubbery body was more than a little disgusting.
And when the sun peaks through after hours of rain, the dirt path in front of my door is clogged with lizards rejuvenating in the brief and brilliant sunshine, which sounds pretty good to me.
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