One thing about being in Africa, you live much closer to nature. Whether it’s the blue-green-red lizards (I’m trying to get a photo) that act just like squirrels, or the cattle, goats and partridges that wander around the town and occasionally the school, you know you’re not in Kansas anymore. But mostly, you’re close to the weather.
We often refer to the prairies back home as “Big Sky Country.” Well that fits here too. Even in the developed towns there are rarely any buildings over two storeys tall. The trees are far apart and the horizon goes on forever (a far departure from my time in Korea, where I found the nearness of the horizon to be claustrophobic).
Want to know what the weather is going to be like in the next few hours? Face into the wind and look. Here it comes. As it’s the rainy season right now, the weather can be very adventurous.
Like most countries, Namibia has distinct geographic and weather patterns, one of which is “The North” the area that I’m living in. It has at least 3 climate zones, the wetlands of Caprivi (to the east), the arid lands in the middle (where I am) and the mountains to the west that lead to the Atlantic Ocean.
As part of our teacher training, we visited the North, not far from here. Even though it was the rainy season, it had not started to rain (the rains are about 2 months late this year and water shortages are expected.). The temperature during the afternoon was approaching 40 C. It was so hot that I would literally fall asleep in the middle of our training sessions.
A week later, we returned to the North to join our schools. What a change! The rains had started. We drove through an incredible downpour. You can see the photos. They were all taken within a 3 minute period. The storm approaches (through the front window of our “combie” van). The storm starts and gets strong (through the side windows of said van).
Apparently, the usual pattern is that it rains for a day or two then stops for a day or two. Then the cycle starts again. It’s rained every night and most mornings for the whole week since we arrived.
One interesting point – at the end of our first excursion to the North, we were taken to see King Kauluma, king of the Ndonga people, to get his blessing for our stay and our work in this region (although only two of the volunteers are actually within his domain this year). He did bless us, but he asked us to bring rain with us when we came back from the south.
It started raining the day we arrived.
