Rain

Rain has come to The Gambia. We have an annual rainfall of 1000mm; half of that falls in August, and most of the rest in July and September. The bulk of this comes at night in tempestuous thunder storms. As I lie beneath my mosquito net the room is lit up by regular flashes of lightning and rain drums incessantly on the corrugated steel roof. In fact some was finding a way through the roof until it was repaired just recently.

         

There can be rain in the day too, causing torrents that wash between houses, removing topsoil, crops and even stretches of road. Most areas have no street-drainage or sewerage system, so surface water gathers in large red-brown muddy pools, hindering both pedestrians and vehicles. The only beneficiaries of this appear to be insects and frogs, who breed in the water. The joyful nocturnal croaking of flirting frogs sometimes drowns out even the rain, and there are hundreds of tadpoles growing in one of the lakes that have formed along the centre of my street.

And the rain has brought mosquitoes too with their malaria parasite that kill three thousand children per day, most of them in Africa. Many of these deaths from malaria could be prevented if children had nets to sleep under.