Rain

Yesterday morning we celebrated the first day of winter, praying to Kali and the Nag snake gods to bring us good fortune with the end of the monsoon season. A few minutes later it started to rain.

A monsoon isn't just normal rain; it's the whole spectrum of wetness. Every possible combination of water and air flashes over the mountains with startling suddenness. Usually the clouds just drizzle, or sit in the air around us as a soggy mist. When it does rain, however, it pours, and within seconds the city is transformed.

For a city built on steep mountain slopes without any sewer system to speak of, water can be a problem. Every road, path, and piece of property is crisscrossed by crude aqueducts and dotted with makeshift drains that send the water spilling out buried pipes and hoses onto the next terraced level below. This is never enough, however, so the streets still flood with rivers of rushing brown water and rice paddies form a multitude of muddy waterfalls. Umbrellas are the order of the day, but they do nothing to help with the mud. Lawns that started out simply soggy quickly become treacherous sink-trapped ordeals to cross. Every time I go out I roll up my pants legs and steel myself for a squishy walk to the program house, and every time I return to my room I walk gingerly to the bathroom to wash the dirt of my feat.

We're still trying to figure out why the city doesn't simply wash away. Everything is so haphazard, it seems like only a matter of time before the whole town just tumbles down the mountain into the river below. Landslides are common. Whole neighborhoods are made inaccessible to taxis by places where the asphalt road broke and sunk down five or ten feet to create a jagged, gravelly cliff. The mountain is not made for cars.

Whatever the holidays may say, the monsoon season will continue in practice for another month or so. Glimpses of blue sky or--most glorious of all!--the sun are rare and cause for excitement. I haven't tried to wash my clothes yet, but the girls said it took theirs a week to dry. Knowledge that people have lived in monsoon regions for centuries gives me a sort of grim hope, but I still don't know quite how I'll adapt. These seasons are so strange. I'm not sure I could handle them, with the months of endless rain.