End of the Burning Season

We just had our first afternoon deluge this week, the kind with loud thunder and the really heavy drops of rain that make living inside of our tin roofed home sound like living inside of a big bass drum.  In the excitement all the children stripped down to their underwear to dive into the pools of accumulating liquid or shower in the water running off the roofs.  However, what the sudden appearance of water did to ameliorate the afternoon heat was undone by increasing the equally unpleasant  humidity.  Farmers are anxiously harvesting what remains of the nyandolo beans, known as pigeon peas in English speaking places.  Our region produces a surplus of these nutritious legumes, so businessmen from the cities have been driving through to buy them in large quantities. We have benefitted from this increased traffic with some free rides.  Little weighing stations have appeared at strategic locations in the town center and countryside where the beans have been accumulating in huge mountains.  We hear that the end destination for the land's bounty is India, where the beans will be processed into vegetable products to help meet the huge and sometimes under-nourished vegetarian population's need for protein.   After the harvest, farmers busily chop down the shrubby nyandolo trees in anticipation of the rainy season, when they will plant corn that will hopefully see them through next year.  Town residents who have somehow saved up the capital to build a new home this year, including several of our colleagues at school, are racing to use what remains of the dry season to make mud bricks, which must dry in the sun and then bake in large smoky improvised kilns.  Many a mango tree has been axed this season to fuel these projects. The summer stormy season is still not upon us and it is still very difficult to get enough water to met the community's daily needs, but this week's harbinger means that relief won't be long now.