Where I come from (Part I): Seasons

Many people ask me, “What was it like growing up in Nigeria?”

Wow, what an overwhelmingly huge question.

I usually have to follow the question with my own question: “What do you want to know?”

I mean, if you moved to a foreign country, and someone asked, “What was it like growing up in America?” how would you respond?

Umm… Different.

So, in case you’re curious about what it was like growing up in a foreign country, I’ll try to tell you a little bit and hopefully not bore you to tears.

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The first thing that struck me as we journeyed from the northern airport town of Kano five hours south to our new hometown of Jos, Nigeria, on Saturday, August 24, 1991, was how green everything was. I was coming from southern California, which is dry at the best of times but which that year was suffering from drought. The vivid green was just startling. It rained on our trip. It rained during dinner at our new neighbors’ home that evening. It rained the next day after we had lunch with other new neighbors. Welcome to rainy season in Jos!

Nigeria is a very disparate country as far as climate. You wouldn’t expect it when you think of Africa. The average person tends to picture “Africa” as Sahara Desert, flat savanna with giraffes and zebras, or jungle. And he’s be right. Africa is really, really big and has all sorts of climates and topography. Even in Nigeria, which is not by any means the largest country in area, has all three of those main areas. The south is coastal and very tropical, a typical rain forest. It rains a lot all year round and is hot and humid all year round. The central belt is more of a grassland with two distinct seasons that are as different from each other as summer and winter in Minnesota. The north is arid and is the beginnings of the dry land that becomes the Sahara the farther north you go.

Our town, Jos, is in the central belt, on a plateau of about 4000 ft. It’s the second coolest place in the country (on average). Really, the temperatures are a lot like southern California: in the 70s. Most of the year.

We arrived in August, which is the peak of the rainy season. And in July and August, it rains every single day. Sometimes it’s only in the afternoon. Other times there are thunderstorms on and off all day long. Most of the rain is from storms: hard, driving rain that pounds on the zinc roof. And hail. I can’t forget to mention the hail. It doesn’t hail every day by any means, but there are always several good hailstorms every year, casting down ice as big as cherry tomatoes. During our awards ceremony at the end of one school year, the electricity went out (which is normal), and no one could hear the speaker because of the rain pounding on the high roof of the chapel. Our high school math teacher had to do the rest of the awards and announcements in his booming voice. That’s the kind of rain I’m talking about. Not rain like in the U.K. or Pacific Northwest.  The season starts in late April to mid-May and always comes with the explosion of flying termites that seem to literally erupt from the ground after the first drenching rain. They are everywhere. They get in your face, fly around the house, flutter around the car, crawl into your bed, the whole works. They totally creep me out, even though I lived in Nigeria a total of nine years. I hate flying termites. The local kids will run around and collect them, grabbing them and throwing them into a bucket of water. The wings fall off in the water, and once the termites are drowned, they get thrown into a pan and fried… or sometimes eaten raw. No, I’ve never eaten one. I just could never get up the courage! Driving at night could be dangerous because there would be flocks of children around the few working street lights (to which the termites are attracted), all trying to grab the flying bugs. Delightful.

The season usually starts off slowly. It rains a couple times a week at first, then three or four times. By mid-July, it’s raining every day. Beautiful thunderstorms and lightning that also bring high winds and flooding at times. Washed out roads, huge potholes, everything. It’s my absolute favorite time of year. The rain cools things off considerably, and I used to love curling up with hot tea (my family is obsessive about hot tea) and a book on summer vacation. You have to sit right by the window, too, because the electricity is often off, so the house gets pretty dark during storms. Our windows are slatted, though, so you have to risk getting rather wet. Even when the windows are closed all the way, rain still gets in. During a really hard storm, we’d have to remove the cushions from the couch, which was pushed up against our living room window, to keep them from getting soaked.

Then in September, the rain starts tapering off, and sometime in October, it mostly stops. It’s warm and humid, but it doesn’t rain.  In November, the dust rolls in. Some years it happens gradually, but other years, we’d wake up one morning, and literally overnight, the air had become filled with a thick cloud of dust. Not like a dust storm you might imagine from watching Lawrence of Arabia. It’s a fine, reddish brown powdery dust called harmattan, and it gets everywhere. In your hair, your nose, onto the furniture, window panes, clothing. Sometimes you can even feel it when you breathe. And the land just dries up. Grass withers and dies. The lush green landscape turns into a brown wasteland in the space of just a few weeks.

But it’s not hot, as you might expect when you think of dust and dry weather. On the contrary, the coolest temperatures usually come during the dry season. The dust is so thick in the air that the sun’s warmth just doesn’t penetrate as well. It never gets cold, but it can cool off enough that people begin to die of exposure. It has been known to be in the 40s at night on rare occasions. The whole season isn’t like that; mostly it’s in the 60s and 70s, but the cold nights can be refreshing…as we snuggle in blankets because homes are not insulated and have no heating mechanisms except for fire. The visibility decreases, too. Distant hills become practically invisible. The sun vanishes before it goes below the horizon at sunset as it sinks below the layer of dust in the air. It’s a red sun, a harmattan sun. One of our missionaries used to sing, “I’m dreaming of a brown Christmas.” How fitting.

Dry season lasts through about February. March brings warm, humid weather again. This is the time of year my mom and I dislike the most. Neither of us is suited for heat, and the humidity can be overpowering, especially without electricity to run a ceiling fan. (Besides, ceiling fans are problematic in the kitchen, where it’s hottest, because they blow out the gas flames on the stove and while you’re trying to light the oven—with matches.) It is warm and humid but doesn’t rain. You can just feel the heavy air. High school classes after lunchtime were particularly difficult in March, since most classrooms didn’t have fans. We were pretty droopy.

And then finally, one day, we’d spot a dark cloud moving in, and we’d hear the sound of distant thunder. We’d go in to class after lunch with the fragrance of rain filing us with hope. Then, about 1:30 or 2 o’clock in the afternoon, we’d hear the pitter-patter of rain on the roof, and we’d beg to be allowed to dash outside to enjoy it. When the bell rang, we’d all dash out from under the veranda roof and lift our faces to the rain. That blessed, refreshing, rejuvenating rain.

I wonder what Vivaldi’s masterpiece The Four Seasons would sound like if he had grown up in Nigeria…

 

Harmattan photo courtesy of http://ebushpilot.com/blog/index.php/2007/01/harmattan-daze/

Rainy season photo courtesy of http://kimkennett.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/settling-in/