You Know It's Hot Season When....

The rains have come, signaling the end of my second hot season in Cameroon. Each night I stretch out on my camping pad, relishing the cool winds lifting my curtains, and thank my lucky stars that the withering heat and oppressive stillness of March and April didn’t last through May.

To convey the discomfort marathon/endurance contest that is “la saison chaud,” my PC friends and I came up with the following list:

YOU KNOW IT’S HOT SEASON WHEN…………

-- your tap water burns you

-- you sweat like a fat man at the gym while sitting still in the shade

-- your food choices at the market are reduced to mangoes or onions. or mangoes.

-- your laundry dries on the line in 30 minutes or less

-- your neighbors’ principal activity is sitting on mats in the shade

-- consequently, your post is a ghost town from 10 in the morning to about 5: 00 at night

-- given the choice between sleeping on the porch with the cockroaches or suffocating in your bedroom, you choose the cockroaches- it’s cooler….

-- either way, you wake up in the middle of the night in a puddle of your own sweat

-- your water consumption goes from 1 Nalgene a day to 5+

-- you stop peeing

-- people ask you “How’s the sun?” about 10x a day

-- you have no appetite

-- you buy a hard mango in the morning and it’s ripe by the afternoon

-- air conditioning and ice cream cones become orgasmic experiences

-- chocolate “soup” is the closest you can get to chocolate “bar”

-- you shower five+ times a day, which doesn’t help much because…

-- your shower water is also burning hot

-- you could flavor your meal with the salt crusted on your neck

-- you wish you could run around in your underwear; all the neighborhood kids are doing it!

-- you use a hand fan while sitting in front of an electric fan (menopause foreshadowing)

-- the wind feels like God is holding a giant hair dryer in front your face

-- you break out in heat rash from not moving

-- your computer feels like an overheated car motor

-- your commute to work resembles a camel ride through the Sahara, minus the camels.

We’re not exaggerating. Still, this year was considerably better than last year, partly because I’ve acclimated, partly because temperatures were slightly lower this year and the rains came earlier, and partly because I cheated and spent three weeks in the chilly mountains of the Northwest, which was like taking a quick dip in a pool in the middle of a long summer road race.

landscape dry as a bone