When it rains, it pours...and the lion doesn't sleep tonight.

The rainy season.  The dry season.  There is no such thing as in between.  It is wet, or it is dry. Well, if there is an in between, we are in it.  During the middle of the rainy season it seems as if the sun has gone into deep depression, never to show her face again.  Yet since I’ve been here, the rain usually doesn’t last longer than a few hours, giving us a breath of fresh cool air. Last night, I was awakened to a sound that could be felt with every part of my body.  It was so loud, so deep, I could have thought it was a bomb going off right in my compound.  But I was so disoriented by sleep, the fear fortunately didn’t cross my mind.  Instead I waited for what came to follow.  The falling of water that cannot be described as rain, for rain entails drops.  But here, it is more of a stream…a river of water pouring from the sky as if all the clouds were completely concentrated over this little patch of earth. 

I heard from someone, although I don’t remember who, that Sierra Leone was named for the notorious roar of thunder that shakes the water from the clouds as if the lion commands it.  If it is loud here, on the bottom floor of my thick concrete compound, I can’t imagine what it sounds like from inside the thin medal structures, most call home.  The sound of the rain alone must make for many restless nights with the wind howling through every door way, window opening, crack or crevasse thrashing in rain and anything else it picks up along the way.  Yet this is the sound that promises life.  With it comes the water that will grow desperately sparse as the dry season stretches into the long dusty future. 

Water is life.  And the lion knows it.  Sierra Leone knows it.

***

This morning was set to a different sound of life, the music of crowded markets teeming with people selling everything you can imagine.  Fruits and vegetables, pots and pans, cookware and clothes to wear, shoes, sandals, radios, electronics and any film you could possibly think of – even if it came out in theaters last week.

I was in town for the lapas.  Beautiful fabric in every color, pattern, design and style.  Tailors will make any and every style of modern or traditional dress perfectly to fit.  I have determined that this will be the most stress free shopping experience of my life - despite squeezing through crowds of people, dodging anything with a motor (for clearly the bigger you are the more right of way they have), bartering prices that have doubled from the color of my skin and tripled from my bad krio speaking, and stuffing my way into a very overcrowded poda poda while grasping to keep hold of my load and still being able to see the landmarks that tell me when I’m almost home.  Not quite a trip to the mall, but so much better.  These are the stresses that excite me.  Simple, beautiful, messy, chaos. And to get a beautifully hand made, perfect to fit, skirt or dress that is exactly the right length for about ten dollars...simple, beautiful, messy, chaos...and wonderful.