rainy season

It has been a typical rainy-season day in Ghanzi. The dawn broke slowly into an overcast sky, still troubled from the showers of the previous night. By 8:00 a.m., the sun had burned off all of the clouds and the heat began, rising through the morning and into the afternoon. During lunch at the Kalahari Arms, I languished under an umbrella on the patio, crushed beneath the heavy blanket of midday heat. There was no wind. The heat descended through the weak canvas of the umbrella, falling in waves onto my head and shoulders, making a mockery of the supposed shade. “It's hot,” I commented to my companion. “Yes,” she replied. “It is hot.” On such days, there's really nothing else to say.

Around 6:00 p.m., the clouds started to move in again, creeping across the sky in counterpoint to the setting sun. The wind began to rise. That particular deep, saturated blue-grey that means rain flooded across the horizon. And at 7:00, the first rain began to fall.

When the rain falls in the Kalahari, the heat breaks so quickly that it's like turning on the air conditioner full blast in a very small car. It is no caressing, bathwater rain. It bears no similarity to the muggy, sauna-like monsoons of India. The rain falls, and the world is cool. Immediately a new, cool wind streams through my house, gusting in the front door and windows and blustering back out the kitchen windows with the curtains fluttering behind. The rain falls, hammering on the roof as the gutters spout water frantically, as fast as they can.

I am back in Botswana.