Dry Season

                “The moon is glinting gently off my Papaya.” I noticed as I looked at the papaya in my lap- which, indeed, had glints of moon on it.

                The moon was actually glistening over quite a bit- the dust-filmed bucket of water next to me, the spoon in my hand, the car driving by stacked high with speakers and higher still with daredevil passengers, the fur on my dog Knut, and glistening quite a bit off the flowing hair on my own head (this is a guess. I can’t see that part of me).

                I’m sitting on my back porch thinking how it’s the dry season now and the game has changed quite a bit. The underwhelming volume of days since I last tried to tell stories seems attackable and retell able, but for now I think I might just have to generalize about the new season.

                So, “Dry Season.” As in- white fluff clouds only exist in my memory. As in- the winds breezing across the Sahara pick up every derelict particulate and pitches it up to be a thread in the blanket that is a gray screen across the sky. The blue yields its traditional place to the gray closer to the horizons and the colluding dust scarf turns even the afternoon sun into a perfectly red coin, a crown on top of thirsty palm trees.

The river that held no regard for its banks in September now cowers below them, leaving their muddy nakedness cracking as winds and temperature alike come up. The last of the unharvested rice in the fields that used to whisper in the wind now sounds like a waterfall of glass shards when the slightest breeze slides through the dry stalks. Are you getting the picture? If your picture resembles Mars on an especially warm day, you’re picturing right.

                Of course it’s actually not all that bad. The wind that muddles the sky also cools the evenings down to the lower 70’s (I had to actually buy a blanket) even if it does spike into high 90’s during the afternoon. People are generally in better spirits now- the harvesting work mostly done, people’s financial lives are about as vivacious as they get throughout the year. There are jams or outings every other night, and general holiday fatness prevails for the time being.

                I think traditionally students tend to trickle back to school this time of year, extending their holidays like Pinnochio’s nose after filing taxes.

                But not at Scarcies Baptist Secondary School, baby.

                If my school was a rockstar, it would eat Fenders for breakfast and never touch the ground when it walked due to the amount of garments thrown at its vibrantly sexy rockstar self.

The first day back, over 90% of the students were in uniform, taking tests and being smart. The full complement of teachers was present to invigilate tests, and I.S. and myself have even spent some time after-hours lately pretending to be electricians (we’ve got these dusty computers we’re trying to safely hook up to a generator…if we fail though, I’m going to sell them to a museum). Schools in Sierra Leone recognize that a student is most comfortable not fused to a desk, but rather blasting around a football field or diving on a volleyball court- we have a whole week this term devoted to sports wherein the four school houses compete against each other.

                So, that’s the “Dry Season.” Anyway, I hope none of you all have holiday hangovers (they’ll come again in less than a year, I promise) and I’ll bet you’re all furiously attacking all the opportunities this new year has to offer.