RAIN!

It's still raining, and I'm about ready to yell "uncle!" It's the kind of weather you just know would warm up if only the sun could break through the clouds. Alas, a glance at accuweather doesn't give much hope for the rest of the week. I hope it dries up long enough for me to at least mow the lawn before I'm out of here for nearly a week starting Wednesday.

This weather made me think about a time when I actually enjoyed rain. That was in Ghana, during the rainy seasons. In West Africa, the rainy season is the time you can count on a major downpour at least once a day, usually in the late afternoon. There are actually two rainy seasons in the part of Ghana I lived in: April through June, and September through November.

Sometimes storms came earlier than late afternoon. If you were a teacher and they came while you were still in school, your job came to a temporary halt. The picture above is part of the classroom block of the school where I taught, Kumasi High School. (It's since moved.) You can't really tell from the picture, but those roofs are corrugated metal, the roofing material used almost universally in the country, at least at that time, and they were not insulated. When rain came, there was such an enormous racket that teachers literally could not make themselves heard over it. All you could do was go to the door or a window and marvel at the rain. Even the students, who had known this phenomenon all their lives, were in awe of this huge power. It was a wonderful shared experience.

Usually, though, the rains came while I was at home. My house had that same kind of metal roof, and it also had a veranda. I would always take a chair out to the veranda and just sit and enjoy the rain. It was soothing, the ultimate white noise, and the cooling breeze was delicious.

Now that was rain. It came, it did its awesome thing, and then it left. I wish this dreary weather we're having here now would take a hint and do the same thing.