Actually, we've been extraordinarily lucky and the raindrops have patiently waited until we, and our belongings, are tucked away safely into our air-conditioned lair!
Since our arrival in January, we've heard STORIES about rainy season. Since our arrival, we've kept hearing "soon, the rains will come"...but never a definitive answer as to when "soon" would be. I'm not 100% certain that rainy season is actually here, but it IS raining RIGHT NOW! And, it did rain last night. And, it rained the first Monday we were back in Accra after a couple of weeks in the States in March. And, it also rained the day I took the picture to the left.
(This picture was taken standing on the balcony of our bedroom. The buildings you see are the other houses in Orchid Gardens.)
The best thing about these rains, is that their timing is perfect.
That Monday in March? Well, that was the day our long-awaited container was delivered. You could feel the moisture in the air. You could see the clouds heavy with water. But it hadn't yet rained, after all those months of warnings. Even on days that it looked and felt like it would rain, it didn't. It may have rained elsewhere. I know it rained as close as a mile away. But here, in the Melrose Place of Accra, Orchid Gardens? Nope, not a drop! When the last of the boxes were put in their respective rooms, the delivery men dashed (tipped), and the back of the truck closed up, the heavens opened and there was a bonafide downpour! Our neighbors weren't so lucky...their container delivery pulled into the driveway at that exact moment! It rained for hours! And, their truck waited for hours!
Today, Brent's piano was being delivered. Seriously. A piano. In Ghana. Needless to say, they don't exactly have piano moving specialists here. I so wish that I had gotten pictures of this, but the poor men were all about to have a heart attack and a thoughtless obruni getting her photo-op might just have sent them over the edge. The piano technician, from whom Brent had purchased the piano, the "piano mover", our driver, one of the "compound's" maintenance workers and one of the gardeners and another unidentified man did the heaving. The minute this group disbanded, the waterfall began! So the backdrop to the piano technician's tuning was the pitter-patter of raindrops!
Maybe the secret to getting more water in these here parts is just to schedule some event that would come to a complete halt if it were to rain. And more rain is really needed. Water is a big issue here. The country is full of rivers. The north gets plenty of rain. But still, a huge percentage of people don't have water. Well, technically, many here in the capital city have the ability to have running water in their homes. There just isn't any. All during dry season, you see big huge water trucks pulling into gated driveways, filling up the water tanks that are there specifically to fill the void. All during dry season, you also see 6, 7, 8 year-old boys and girls carrying the ubiquitous school-bus-yellow water barrels with red tops on their heads, walking and walking and walking in search of water. Often, they return home empty-barrelled. The water bill collector comes, however, even when the water doesn't.
Thursday, we caught our driver filling up these plastic yellow containers using the hose, that the gardener left for him, attached to the spigot in the back of our house. Six of them to be exact. Clearly, Orchid Gardens is one of those gated drives that opens its doors to the large water trucks! We didn't stop him. But once his own car was loaded up, I had to go outside and tell him that he really shouldn't do that, lest someone see him and cause an uproar. And then he made use of the new word I taught him the other day: to sneak! "I'd better sneak out here, then!!" And off he went. Who could blame him, really? When he sees the insane amount of water that the gardeners use every day keeping the grass in the compound green and the flowers blooming at the same time that local Ghanaians can't even find water to buy to keep themselves or their homes clean. And to think that we get upset when the water pressure is low.
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