Rainy Season in Malawi

Rainy Season in Malawi
It’s March in Malawi, the height of rainy season. A solid couple hours a day is devoted to steady rain and the occasional stretches of absolute downpour. You can’t leave the house without an umbrella and you better have some sort of waterproof shoes or be ready to splash around in flip flops.
Just imagine a downpour so thick that the smell of rain invades every room of the house. The patter on the roof has climaxed to a uniform roar. Nothing you can do drowns the sound. You can simply bath in it. And if you stand in the right spot in the living room you can actually bath in it too. I guess they didn’t exactly design corrugated metal to be leak proof. Anyhow, what I’m trying to get at is that the sound of a torrential downpour is the most mind deafening sound I’ve ever encountered. I’ve yet to find anything that mutes the sound in any way. Even with my iPod on full blast, earbuds pushed into my ear canal as far as possible; even then the music can’t compete. This is my cry for help, send me ear plugs! When it isn’t a mind-numbing downpour, the soft patter of drops on the corrugated tin is quite soothing. It’s the sort of white noise that babies would easily fall asleep to. And for me, it’s the perfect background noise to cozy up to. The white noise patter is the best, the ideal decibel level.
One can plant a garden by haphazardly tossing seeds on the ground. They nearly sprout on site. The key is to keep the chickens away; they’re as pernicious as a plague of locusts. They’ll walk through a newly planted garden, a hen with a dozen chicks in tow, and henpeck the hell out of anything loose on the ground. I blame the death of my pansies on these ridiculous creatures. If it isn’t already clear, chickens roam free here. The only sort of confines they know is at night when they’re saddled inside the kitchen, from dusk till dawn. But once the sun is up out they are, ready to peck the hell out of anything in sight. Being here gives a whole new meaning to “free range chickens”. Quite frankly, they’re irritating as all hell. The one high note, my neighbor’s chicken has taken to roosting in my outside kitchen. This past week I’ve come up with an egg a day. Guess the mama hen likes my bag of charcoal enough to nest on it. Voila! Farm fresh eggs.
If you haven’t already inferred, mud is a huge problem during this season as well. I spent a large chunk of last Saturday watching a tractor trailer attempt to navigate its way through a former road turned muddy bathtub. So few roads here are paved. Just beyond the reach of the highway, the M1 which curves its way through Malawi, the country’s interstate backbone, all roads are made of various combinations of dirt, sand, and small rocks. And dirt in rainy season becomes mud. A few days of steady downpours and half the roads become soupy messes. Much more fun to hike through barefoot, squishing mud between your toes, than taking a crowded pickup truck leaden with katundu and people. Because then it will only be a matter of just how deep the wheels will sink into the goupy mess and who they nominate to help push the car out. Always a treat to watch though. There’s something fascinating about watching a large group of individuals rocking a car back and forth through deep, muddy gulleys. The sound too. So sloshy, sloupy, slushy, and on. And watch out for the spray, the tire gets one good spin and you’ve been splattered like a Jackson Pollock. The good news is the cars all eventually get out. At least I haven’t seen the mud claim any car as its own, swallowing it into some muddy orifice. But hey, I still have another month or so to go.
All in all, I like rainy season. It’s a nice break from the sweltering heat of chihanya. It’s nice to have a break from the sun. I was starting to believe that clouds were only a wispy figment of my imagination. Now I know they do indeed exist and in great quantity with raindrops big enough to put my eye out. Oh well, inside I go to a good book and a cup of tea. Because now it’s cool enough to want tea. That’s a relief. Let’s hope I get a good white noise patter that will really make my day.