The Rain in Spain...
on Phil Bradfield (The Gambia), 07/Jun/2010 11:24, 34 days ago
(Written 07/06/2010 11:00, RED5, Janjanbureh)...is probably less spectacular than the rain in Gambia. Last night we a little mini storm; it can’t have rained for more than half an hour or so, but it was pretty heavy and it seemed especially impressive having not seen any rain for the last four months! The best part though? The lightning. It woke me up long before the rain arrived: a constant, silent flickering in the sky to the north, like a badly connected light bulb somewhere behind the clouds, and then just occasionally a blinding flash from over to the north-east. These last were followed about thirty seconds later by soft but incredibly long rolls of thunder. It was enchanting; I must have stood outside watching it for a goodfifteen minutes, probably longer.The rain arrived about half an hour after that. Not monsoon style or anything like that; I think by British standards it would class as a downpour, rather than a storm. That said, corrugated iron roofs do make even a light shower sound like the end of the world. And it’ll get better too: this is still just the warm up to the rains proper. But they’ll be here soon. Very soon. And the storms will be spectacular, I’m sure. I'm quite looking forward to it!Quite apart from the storms, everyone who’s experienced them tells me that the rains simply transform the country: the dirt and sand roads turn to impassable mudbaths, we’ll be sleep-deprived from the noise of the nightly storms, the humidity will be unbearable and mould will start growing on everything. There’ll be veritable plagues of insects, and dusty wastelands will be come mini-forests overnight. All good fun, and I’m sure you’ll be reading far more about it in the next couple of months...But with all that still to come, the really noticeable thing this morning is that suddenly all the colours seem a lot more vibrant. Ever since I’ve been here, everything has been covered with a thick layer of dust, which deadens colours and makes everything look tired and washed out. There’s also been a lot of dust in air: the sky’s been grey more often than blue, and when you looked around you everything was a bit hazy, blurred around the edges. But this morning, with the dust temporarily washed away by the rain, on my walk to work this morning I was treated to a gorgeous blue sky, crystal clear air and trees as richly coloured as any in England’s “green and pleasant land”. Lovely, when I could look at it without fallingin a puddle!