Pluie

I feel the need to talk once again about the weather. I think I did it a disservice by cramming the entire description into a paragraph. To make up for it, I will write a short post just about rain.

The Sami people have hundreds of words for snow, and one could easily come up with a comparable amount of words for rain-related things here in Gabon. There's day rain and night rain, rain you can work in and rain you can't walk in. There's lightning that assaults your eyes and ears, and there background lightning going from cloud to cloud that looks like a moving strobe light, and makes no thunder at all.

It rarely rains during the day here, and if it does, it's usually a light rain. I like it when it rains during the day, because it keeps everything cool. It's sort of a happy drizzle, sprinkling itself about. It's best to do tough work, like moving dirt, in that sort of weather, because of the lack of direct sunlight and occasional breeze. When the rain gets a little bit more intense, we work inside on projects like car maintenance and painting.

The night rain is like nothing you have ever seen before, assuming you've never seen it before. Because of the darkness, the lightning is just that much more dramatic. Unlike the States, where there tends to be a couple flashes of lightning every so often, the lightning here is fairly constant. The cloud to cloud lightning never stops; flashing softly behind cloud cover, but makes no sound. The big lightning bolts are incredible. I've only seen two directly, but they are the largest, brightest, and loudest pieces of weather I have ever seen. Truly incredible. The sound is something like a cross between a bullwhip being cracked, and an avalanche. It starts with a giant snapping sound, but then descends into a low rumble.

How does one end a blog post tidily, once one is out of things to say?