precipitation

It is drizzling here tonight.

There is an African proverb that i love:

Let your love be like the misty rain: coming softly, but flooding the river.

But i only experienced misty clouds, not misty rains, in Africa. Rains were usually tempestuous, temperamental downpours that you could hear coming for kilometers, thanks to corrugated metal roofs. Sometimes that advance warning was enough time to bolt for home before getting soaked (and having one's laptop and grading get soaked). Sometimes you were too far from home, and could feel your shoulders instinctively droop in the hopelessness of staying dry. I like playing in the rain, but not with my computer, work clothes, and books!

I miss the rains in Africa (yes, like the song). :-) But because i am tired, if i finish this entry now it will be more melancholy than it ought to be. I will wait until tomorrow.

Today: The canyon winds are blowing. The sky is clear; the air is dry. Despite last night's rain, i need to water the plants in pots on the porch.

Back to about Cameroon: Even under an umbrella or overhang people got wet, because the water ran ankle-deep on the ground, and came down so hard it splashed up waist-high. Walls there are spattered with orange about one meter up--hence why it's aesthetically smart to have mud-brick houses, or paint the plaster a nice terracotta color: the splashes blend in. A good half of the rains were thunderstorms: the lightning was amazing, spidering horizontally across the sky or staking the ground. I liked it when the power was knocked out (for a short while) and you could sit in awe of the power of the storm outside. The thunder drowned out the sound of everything else (even the raindrops on roofs) and made me think of some Psalms where God's voice is described as thunder: mighty, awe-striking, and not to be taken lightly.