dry season

The following is a demonstration of how skewed my view of the world is right now. I went for a bike ride to my lake the other day and took a few photos. I thought: these are nice, look- there's water! and grass! and animals! What a pretty area! Example:



Then I actually looked at the pictures, and realized that the cows are starving, the grass is mostly mud, and so is the water. You can hardly even see the other shore because of all the dust in the air. So to give myself a little reality check (and to give you all one too, albeit in the other direction) I thought I'd do a little before-and-after photo montage.

my courtyard in October

last week: sandstorm!!


before: trees with leaves


after: not so much


before


after


this one's good- same shot, before...


and... after!


So, as you can see, Burkina in the dry season is... less than picturesque. My world is not super pretty right now. Looking at my pictures from the fall I can't BELIEVE I used to think Burkina was kind of scrubby and sad. I realize now that it was GORGEOUS. Now, on the other hand....

So you can possibly get some sense of my excitement when I tell you that it rained last night!!!! We had a huge windstorm a few days ago that bent all the metal telephone poles to the ground and blew off half the sheet-metal roofs in town, but that only came with a few drops of rain. Last night we got the wind again, but this time it poured for about an hour, then it calmed down into a steady rain until stopping early this morning. It was 78 degrees in my house and I put on a flannel shirt. I am currently wearing my hair down, and there are no signs of prickly heat. I might just survive this hot season.