DUST!
on The Road Less Travelled (Cameroon), 22/Mar/2010 11:52, 34 days ago
Last Thursday Maroua was hit by a massive dust storm which is still going on although the amount of dust in the air has diminished greatly. This storm is a result of a dust storm in the southern Sahara Desert being swept across the majority of the entire continent. The countries the worst hit are Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon as can be seen by the following satellite photo from NASA (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=43200).The positive thing about the recent dust storm is that the dust in the air has blocked out the sun which means our high temperatures have decreased significantly. The temperatures have been quite moderate lately which has been welcomed, the dust however has not been welcomed.This dust storm makes it quite difficult to be outdoors. Moto-taxi drivers have been either covering their heads (all but their eyes) with scarves or been using surgical masks. Even when I went out walking on Thursday I wore a mask. It has been quite scary to be on a moto in the dust storm because the visibility is terrible.The dust has also made everything dirty. Even if you wash off your table at 8am, by 9am there is a layer of dust again on the table. I actually had footprints in my house showing me where I had been walking because so much dust had collected on the floor. On Saturday I cleaned for about 4 hours trying to get rid of some of the dust.A picture from outside my house. Usually you can see down the street and you can see the mountain in the background.Hopefully this storm is passing, I am not sure which is worse all this dust or temperatures of 47 degrees.