They tell me that some years it doesn’t really occur. Nobody can guess exactly how long it will last. Both your best friend and your worst enemy, it’s the dry season. It’s been bone dry here for about three weeks now and in some ways it feels like a different town. Everything is suddenly covered in a layer of dust. Without air conditioning in my office I always have the window open and I feel like I am breathing 50% dirt, especially when a truck drives by and churns up an enormous cloud of it. All over town lips are chapped, eyes are red and itchy, everyone’s complaining about the soreness in their throat and the hacking cough.
On the other hand the air isn’t so heavy and damp. Our jeep doesn’t get stuck in the dust nearly as bad as it gets stuck in the mud. The rain can really slow the economy in a place like this where people travel by bicycle taxi, so dry weather is good for the economy and good for microfinance. I can climb eight flights of stairs and hardly break a sweat, because sweat actually does its job now. It evaporates and cools me off! It’s like an extended flashback to the famous dry heat of Phoenix, Arizona - my home village.
They tell me that one of these days the skies will open up again and we’ll be pounded with rain, day after day. This dry, dusty diversion will become a memory. Swampy days are never too far away in the rain forest.
I couldn’t help but laugh, picturing a jeep getting stuck in the dust.