Rain season

We have been here for a full year now. And while many of you have enjoyed the first big snow, we are fully in the rainy season. Well, you have rain throughout the year, and so do we. So what does it mean to be in the rainy season?

Rainy season means it rains A LOT more than during dry season/ Sun season. Everything is muddy; trails, gardens, and even the inside of my house show the evidence. I have realized that my floor here will never be ‘red clay’ free, no matter how often I change the water in my mop bucket. The clothes show more red stains. But what’s more annoying is that the clothes sometimes need more than 2 or 3 days to dry. I personally chose to have only 3-4 outfits to wear here in Kovol. (We do have more in Goroka, but we try to not show off all our clothes since people here don’t have many outfits either). So what do I do? I will have to wear clothes a few days longer like the people do. Mold started appearing in our bedroom and the smell was so bad that I couldn’t sleep there anymore. So we are back to finishing painting areas that we haven’t finished yet. But we have mold growing even on double-mold-shield painted walls.

Another fun fact is that in rainy season we get those “rain flies”. They look like flying ants and can swarm the lights. So we normally only leave two small lights on when they come, in otder to have less to clean in the morning. Most of them die at some point during the morning and we find a pile of them that we can sweep up. When the rain hits our roof, it makes talking impossible in our house (in rooms that aren’t covered by the attic floor).

What does the rainy season mean for the people in Kovol? Well they had better get some work done in the time when it is not raining. They still have to go to their gardens to weed at times or to get food. Some people are still hoping to plant peanut gardens while others want to take a break from gardening. But some people even seem to be bored. One guy, who is building a new house, works for a little bit early in the morning but then the rain hits and he can’t do anything. So one day he was sleeping most of the afternoon in his neighbor’s house and finally got up in the evening to wander around the village because he was bored. Also crossing the big rivers to other villages can be dangerous since the water is higher and there is a stronger current. So they can’t go fishing and even hunting isn’t so much fun in the rain. 

I find it harder to push my kids to get outside, especially when I think of the cleaning afterwards. But the kids here love to wash themselves in the mud. So it is really hard to avoid getting dirty from mud. We once found some kids and adults playing ‘garden’ with the mud.

In rainy season it is also harder for the helicopter to get into Kovol because we are more often clouded in. And we also get strong winds during this time. It easily damages the roofs of the people here. And many Kovol people already have holes in their roofs and get rained on in the night. Well, they could fix the roofs , but for some reason they are sometimes slow to do so. It is a lot of work to rebuild the house. Maybe we can find out other reasons why later. 

Do I like rainy season? Not really. I am still thankful for rain though, as it makes the garden grow and provides us with water in the house. I am also thankful for my house where I can still be comfy and dry!