The dry season is just that - dry. Living in the Casamance it wasn't as bad as those living further north in the Sahel. At least there was the Casamance River a few miles away, and a lot of shallow streams that had small fish, seemingly consisting mostly of bone. The villagers would turn the streams into rice paddies by damming up one end and causing a large, wide, shallow pool to form. They would plant rice in the mud, getting 3 harvests per year.
But there was no rainfall for about 9 months out of the year. When I say "no rainfall," I don't mean "not much." I mean none at all. Not a drop from the sky. The sky was deep blue all day, every day with rarely even a wisp of cloud. Being so close to the equator (17 degrees north,) the area gets the sun's rays much more directly than we do in Seattle. This is because of the Earth's tilt. Also because of that tilt, twice a year the sun would be directly overhead - something that never happens north of the Tropic of Cancer (or south of the Tropic of Capricorn), and which Seattle will never experience. When the sun is directly overhead, you cast no shadow. As amazing as that is, it tends to get lost in the fact that it is just too damned hot!
The primary color during the dry season is brown. I lived in the Casamance region in southern Senegal which is predominantly forest. There are huge trees with boles 30 feet and more in diameter. There are "iron trees," so dense that the wood sinks, and can't be cut with regular wood working tools. It needs metal saws and tools to work it. During the dry season, that's about all there is though. The forest floor is quite bare and brown. Lake beds are dry dirt, so dry that it seems there has never been water there. Dust is everywhere.
At some point in late May or early June the rainy season begins. It starts inauspiciously. If you don't know what to look for, you wouldn't notice it. No sudden monsoon comes pouring down. Instead, the first sign is just a hint of moisture in the air, the barest reminder that somewhere, there is water. It means the rain is coming in a few days or perhaps a week. It also means that if you get up early the next morning, you will see something magical.
The dull brown, dusty earth will be covered with small tiny, pink flowers. These will last for less than a day before dying. But for a while, there will be life and color where before there was only dirt. The first time this happened, I thought it was just a pretty fluke. The next year, it happened again, and I learned from the villagers that yes, this happens every year. One told me, "The rain will come soon. Maybe a few days. Then the crops will grow."
When the rains actually start, it is nothing like the famous Seattle rain. We get frequent drizzle here, but downpours are rare. In Senegal during the rainy season, it rains every day for 20-30 minutes. But what a rain! The term "downpour" doesn't come close. It is more like standing under a waterfall.
One day I was walking from Bafata II to Bafata I (my village was really 3 villages, all named Bafata and divided by a wide, communal field full of mango trees, where the folks had parties, meetings and the like.) As usual, I was being harried by a gaggle of happy children who just loved to follow the toubab (African term for a white man) around to see what he was up to. The toubab was an unending source of amusement and oddity. About midway across the big field between the villages, the kids all started looking behind me and pointing, saying in Mandinka, "Look it's ..." and a word I didn't know. I looked around, expecting from their behavior to see a lion, or some wild animal. But there was nothing. When I looked back, they were running pell mell away from me as though the furies were after them.
I was a bit alarmed by this. I looked back again, but still there was nothing coming. I searched the ground for a plague of snakes or perhaps driver ants on the move. Still nothing. Then suddenly, it hit me.
I don't mean that I suddenly understood (although that happened as well.) I mean that what the kids were running from actually hit me, as in *smack* at about 30 mph. It was rain coming down in sheets. It staggered me, then as realization dawned, I started laughing. The kids knew they couldn't outrun it, and when it caught them they started laughing and dancing like it was the most fun they'd had in their lives. They often responded that way to things - the villagers I lived with were a very happy people, and the kids gave definition to the word "joy."
That was how I learned to look for an approaching line of slightly darker soil and bending grass, as well as for plagues of snakes, ants and wild animals. But I can tell you, that first time I got hit by the rain was quite a surprise!
Once it starts to rain, the predominant color changes from brown to green very quickly. Things start growing instantly. Like those little pink flowers, plants grow up overnight. About a gajillion different types of grass start growing, and within a couple of days the brown is gone. In between the huge tree boles there is a lawn - all of the grass started growing at the same time, so for a while it is pretty much the same length and looks a lot like a badly mowed lawn. After a few days, the differences between the varieties start to stand out and it takes on the look of my neighbors yard at our old house. He never mowed his lawn.
By August, the grasses are well over six feet high. Obviously, it is no longer easy to walk off the trail. It takes a machete to cut through the stuff. There are several varieties of what we called "saw grass," with serrated edges. That would cut a person easily, drawing blood so we quickly learned to treat the African bush with respect, and walk carefully and deliberately through it. And of course, the higher the grass, the more the snakes loved it for the cover it offered. So it was good that when we did cut through it, we made a lot of noise with our machetes.
But it was a lot easier just to stay on the well worn trails during this time of year.
There were lots of grasses, but not a lot of flowering bushes. So during the rainy season, there was every shade of green imaginable, and several that were unimaginable. Living in the African bush gave me some appreciation for how artists must see the world. I recall one day during late July, the midst of the rainy season when everything was growing at light speed, I looked out at a vista that included rice paddies, cultivated fields, bamboo groves and forest. Everything was green, but there were so many greens that it was as if there were a full palette of colors. I had no idea before that green was such an incredibly rich color.
