16 January
Because it's taken me about 5 hours to get a screen up I can post from, I'm going to hijack my own post to give y'all a link to an article that I think makes a good case for why Bush officials need to be prosecuted for war crimes: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/18/prosecutions/ . It basically says that you can't say no ne is above the rule of law and then allow people to be above the rule of law--and that the Bush people have admitted to torturing prisoners in Guantanamo, and, well, just read it.
Back to our regularly scheduled post:
It’s been raining a lot today. The way rainy season* usually works like this: rain nearly every day, but usually only for an hour or so. Sometimes it rains very heavily, but then the period of rain is even shorter. Not today though. It just stopped, about 6 hours after it started, and for big long periods of that it was pounding against the tin roofs, raising a ruckus that made it difficult to hear anything but the rain.
The power is out. It has been ever since I got home and who knows how long before that. Lately Escom has seemed more reliable; reliably out several times a week, but fewer-not nearly every night anymore-and for less time-maybe 20 minutes instead of an hour. We try to give Escom some allowances for being out during bad weather, though. But not too many, because that would ruin the fun in hating them so much.
David and I have two routes we take into town. One on the main road, which we take when we’re starting out on the uphill bits of town-the bank, the post office, Metro, Karson’s Cosmetics for samosas, or Tasty Bites. The second is the back way, which we take when we’re starting out in the downhill bits-Shop Rite, the market, Uncle Dan’s, Spar Superette. Lately, we’ve needed to go uphill first and we haven’t taken the back route for weeks.
After a few hours of the rain, we headed home in school transport. On the way home, several of the dirt roads we travel on were flooded. Fast flowing streams of water like tomato bisque that had been sitting around for awhile running along side us and under us and around us. New ruts were created by the erosive power of the rain, and old ruts deepened and made even more uneven. Lurching through these now unavoidable grooves sent us careening around in the bus like beans in a rattle.
Before she left, Nikki took pictures of the amayi washing their clothes and bathing in the river several feet below the bridge on the way to town. As we drove over the same river, the water was seething brown maybe a foot below the planks of the bridge; we all took a deep breath when we got to the other side.
Luckily, Moses fixed up my beds well, my new seeds weren’t drowning and I think how soaked the paths between the beds got just means the plants will be encouraged to root down for the water. Now, the only evidence of how thorough that storm was is the impossibility of getting to my house by car without jostling around quite a lot.
* You may wonder why I don’t talk about the other seasons much. Dry season is watching the land desiccate by inches, and while the end result is gorgeous, the process isn’t all that easy to delineate. During cold season I just complain about being cold a lot. It seems to be about the only thing we can manage to do when it’s cold.
Back to our regularly scheduled post:
It’s been raining a lot today. The way rainy season* usually works like this: rain nearly every day, but usually only for an hour or so. Sometimes it rains very heavily, but then the period of rain is even shorter. Not today though. It just stopped, about 6 hours after it started, and for big long periods of that it was pounding against the tin roofs, raising a ruckus that made it difficult to hear anything but the rain.
The power is out. It has been ever since I got home and who knows how long before that. Lately Escom has seemed more reliable; reliably out several times a week, but fewer-not nearly every night anymore-and for less time-maybe 20 minutes instead of an hour. We try to give Escom some allowances for being out during bad weather, though. But not too many, because that would ruin the fun in hating them so much.
David and I have two routes we take into town. One on the main road, which we take when we’re starting out on the uphill bits of town-the bank, the post office, Metro, Karson’s Cosmetics for samosas, or Tasty Bites. The second is the back way, which we take when we’re starting out in the downhill bits-Shop Rite, the market, Uncle Dan’s, Spar Superette. Lately, we’ve needed to go uphill first and we haven’t taken the back route for weeks.
After a few hours of the rain, we headed home in school transport. On the way home, several of the dirt roads we travel on were flooded. Fast flowing streams of water like tomato bisque that had been sitting around for awhile running along side us and under us and around us. New ruts were created by the erosive power of the rain, and old ruts deepened and made even more uneven. Lurching through these now unavoidable grooves sent us careening around in the bus like beans in a rattle.
Before she left, Nikki took pictures of the amayi washing their clothes and bathing in the river several feet below the bridge on the way to town. As we drove over the same river, the water was seething brown maybe a foot below the planks of the bridge; we all took a deep breath when we got to the other side.
Luckily, Moses fixed up my beds well, my new seeds weren’t drowning and I think how soaked the paths between the beds got just means the plants will be encouraged to root down for the water. Now, the only evidence of how thorough that storm was is the impossibility of getting to my house by car without jostling around quite a lot.
* You may wonder why I don’t talk about the other seasons much. Dry season is watching the land desiccate by inches, and while the end result is gorgeous, the process isn’t all that easy to delineate. During cold season I just complain about being cold a lot. It seems to be about the only thing we can manage to do when it’s cold.