I am a big fan of lazy weekend afternoons curled up in an armchair, a good book in hand, an overcast sky and rain providing the backdrop. When it comes to overcast, rainy days, Senegal definitely has it's share between July and October aka rainy season. While we occasionally experience those lazy, gray, rainy days, Senegal's rainy season manifests itself more commonly as an impressive display of forceful winds, lightening and torrential downpours accompanied by mighty thunder sound effects. I have woken up more than once thinking the entire apartment building was falling down.
Have you heard of the Butterfly effect? The chaos theory, not the movie. The theoretical example often used to demonstrate the theory is a butterfly flapping it's wings which consequently causes a hurricane weeks later in a far off destination. Though I can't offer any expert opinions on the theory, I
can say that it's almost inevitable that our monster storms here in Senegal spin off the west coast and turn into tropical storms heading towards the north american coast. We had a crazy storm here about a weak before hurricane Isaac made landfall.
Sadly Senegal's infrastructure isn't always up to the challenge of handling excessive amounts of rain. Dakar experiences some flooding every year, but this year we've experienced more excessive rain levels than usual. This past week we had 6.1 inches of water in 2 hours. Most of the city's neighbourhoods experienced severe flooding and the president came home early from a trip abroad, ordering a full emergency response.
Though my apartment is on the the main floor I escaped the floods unscathed. Our campus was not so fortunate, but did recover quickly with the help of some masterful bailers. As much as we like the cool relief of the storms and the lush greenery it supports, suffice it to say that for the city's sake I don't pine for romantically rainy days.
Our blue top (outdoor sports court) which is also the school's main thoroughfare.
The soccer field. Kids love to play american football in the rain.
The staff parking lot.
A few of our dorm girls who heroically bailed out main floor classrooms.
Photo credit to Mr. E-M, DA Staff.
