It’s the dry season here and hot. Hot! I’m used to high temperatures, growing up in Queensland, in Australia’s north-east. In summer, it’s regularly 35 degrees there. In my early twenties, I owned an old car without air conditioning and driving around, the sweat used to trickle down my legs.
But Juba– well, it’s hot like I’ve never experienced before. I wake up at 5 in the morning, my head aching, my throat parched, in a room that feels like the inside of an oven.
At work, we huddle in our air conditioned containers. Getting the job done feels like wading through waist deep treacle and tempers are trigger-hot.
The mozzarella cheese I bought from ‘Vam’, the Chinese shop around the corner, melts in my bag.
This week they’re registering temperatures of 47 degrees Celsius. Apparently the rainy season normally comes in mid-March, but this year, it’s late. ‘Climate change’, the boss says. ‘It’s never taken this long to rain before.’
Some of my colleagues are pleased. The funding has been delayed and what has come, is only a fraction on previous years, so the more time they have to get seeds and tools to the farmers, the better. Once the rainy season begins, so does the agricultural season and the farmers begin to plant.
But other colleagues are worried that when the rains come, they’ll end quickly and won’t be enough to give the crops a good start.
Personally, I can’t wait.
It all reminds me of my grandfather. A tall lean Australian farmer, he used to note the rainfall and atmospheric pressure figures each day in a slim blue diary. His barometer was at the bottom of the grandfather clock on the wall of the homestead. The rainfall he gauged himself from calibrated plastic containers placed around the farm.
Not that there was much rain to measure. It’s a dry country in the outback. Most of the time the grass is brown and red clay almost dust. I remember, as summer developed, he used to look at the figures with a worried face and listen carefully to the weather forecasts on the radio each morning and night.
But then the clouds would gather, thunder would begin to rumble and lightning flash across the sky. As the fat rain drops fell, my grandfather’s relief was tangible. He’d stride out onto the farm, ‘Blue’ the blue heeler dog at his side, and call out to the sky, ‘Send her down, You-ie’. My sister and I would run to follow him, screaming and laughing, as we splashed in the puddles.
I’m many years older now, but little has changed. I know when the rain drops begin to sound on the iron roofs in Juba, I’ll be so relieved. I promise I’ll run outside, shouting, ‘Send her down you-ie’, to the sky.
It’ll be a little difficult to translate to the Ethiopians who own the compound where I live, and sit all day in a little gazebo near the gate, drinking coffee and chatting. But they’re a very civilized bunch. I’m sure they’ll understand.
©Jean Di Marino 2012
