The Rains

The rains are finally here. I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of heavy rain on our tin roof. I love the smell and the feel of the air after it rains here. In the morning the air was cool and moist, and the sun stayed behind the clouds most of the day. Here it rains in short, intense bursts. We had another cloudburst around lunchtime, which Daniel stared at in awe. He has probably forgotten about rain, not having seen any at all since last spring. The landscape has been quite dry since we came to Babati, but within the next few days the ground will be bursting with new green growth everywhere. It will be especially neat to see the change in the eastern part of the Mbugwe area, which has been essentially gray and sand colored up to now. We will also be starting to get some more experience using our 4-wheel-drive in sticky situations, starting as soon as we drive out of our gate. Some of the Mbugwe villages will be almost entirely out of reach for us for the next couple of months, on account of multiple rivers across the already rough dirt roads. A lot of the hard-core vehicles here actually have “snorkels”, so the car can “breathe” while going through rivers. You can still get stuck, but if you get stuck in a river it is less of a crisis. We don’t have a snorkel, so if we get stuck in water above our exhaust pipe we would be in real trouble.