the best storm ever

It hasn’t rained in over a week. Every morning, every evening, I scan the sky and wish for rain. I daydream about an encore of the best storm ever, the one that kicked off a mini wet season about two weeks ago.

I was at the Mission Culturelle, where I was participating in a meeting of local project heads. There were about 10 people around the table, the meeting had gone on for about two hours, and I noticed the wind had started to pick up. Outside, the dust in the courtyard began to swirl about and I could hear the whoosh of the wind in the trees and metal shutters banging against stone buildings. The windows and doors of the conference room were open, and the wind and dust started to blow through the room. We continued the meeting—I was facing the window and was entirely captivated by the escalating storm outside—but the man who was speaking (one of the local NGO heads) didn’t even pause to turn and look as the storm mounted and the sky grew dark outside. All of a sudden, it was upon us, everyone very quickly said their “au revoirs” and scattered. Through the conference room doorway I could see the rain—horizontal—blowing sideways down the corridor. I got up, looked out into the corridor and was rewarded with a cool blast of wind and rain. The courtyard was flooded already and the floor of the corridor too. A dog was huddled against the wall, hiding from the blowing rain, hoping no one would chase him out into the storm.