Rainy Season

It's funny, the rainy season.

The pure regularity of the weather.

I remember it from other places. Like the Galapagos Islands. Perched as they are, on the equator, surrounded by a thousand miles of undisturbed, weather regulating ocean

they must have one of the most predictable climates I have ever come across. I remember the weather. Every day, hot and dry as a desert. The same every day. Until 4:46 p.m. or was it 4:32, I forget the exact moment. But at the time I could have set my clock by it, had I had one. In the span of maybe 8 to 10 minutes, the town of XXX went from a dry desert town to the legendary underwater city of Atlantis.
It rained.

It rained for about 42 min. And it rained fiercely, with passion.
That was the rainy season.

Back to Ghana

For over a month now, Accra has been my hot, humid home. Relentlessly hot and humid. Not a single drop of rain to relieve my sweating body. Until yesterday. For just over a month people have told me about the rainy season. March and April they said. But I had two problems with that.

First of all, the notorious lack of precision that is some times seen in comments from Ghanaians. They have a different perspective on time.  I figured March or April was a synonym for sometime after christmas. I was wrong.

Secondly, like a first-time visitor to the barren, icy wastelands of Greenland who is told that this very island, in summer, is in fact a lush and green meadow, I was incredulous. True to my namesake, the doubting Tomas, I refused to imagine this hot, humid city in the throes of tropical rain. I was, of course, wrong again.

March 1st 2001. They had told me March, and I was sceptical, but on the first day of march, after a late night at work, I was in a cab homw when the rain began. By 7:30, driving through North Kaneshie, or was it Nima, the rain was pouring. We had closed the windows of the cab to avoid instant drowning but the humiditymeant instant fogging up of all windows. The visibility reduced to zero, in a car that wasn't exactly in it's prime, we crwled through traffic, hoping that we would avoid other vehicles in the same situation.

It all ended well, but the transformation of an entire city from one day to another. From hot, humid, big city, to the underwater mystery of Atlantis, is still one of the most awesome sights to behold