The Rainy Season

I can’t quite hear the end of our conversation.  Though the headphones are all but plastered to my face, it just seems to get louder and louder.  I ask if she can hear it.  Just as she informs me she can’t, it changes cadence and the sound of pitter patter on the roof has turned into a roar. 

She tells me about how the lake water in Austin has gone down significantly.  Where the docks once hosted fishermen and women, is now all but barren.  As I leave the cyber to walk outside, I take it in.  The site of the rain drenched streets and the calm brought about as families and children relocate themselves from the streets into their homes. 

It’s almost as foreign as snow.  Though, with snow, my reaction is one of a crack addict who’s recently discovered a stash they’d thought long gone.  My mind is reeling and soon I’m screaming in delight and waking up anyone who may have been asleep at 6 a.m.  Obviously, you could never go sledding or make snow angels in the rain.  If you tried to go swimming in the road, you’d probably get tetanus.    

It’s calming, the rain, refreshing.  The sound it makes, the way it shuts the world away, the smell it brings.  At times, it’s so strong it sounds as though it might break through the roof.  It’s not all romantic.  At this point, I go through an entire bottle of repellent every few weeks.

 

In Texas, as in most places, there exist a set of unspoken rules, norms, if you will.  Chief among them, your jeans stay tucked away in your closet until summer’s end.  Summer generally lasting an extra season beyond what it’s been allotted.  This particular rule would never stand in Nicaragua.  In my jeans and T-shirt, though I’m sweating buckets, I couldn’t imagine, trading my jeans for booty shorts.  Between the piropos or cat calls that follow me everywhere I go (regardless of what I don) and the mosquitos that swarm every inch of uncovered skin, it doesn’t seem to be an option.

Since rainy season hit, the entire country has been in a state of emergency surrounding the dengue pandemic.  This of course, has done nothing to assuage the hypochondriac within me.  Everywhere I go, I hear “dengue,” whether it’s in the health center talking about the dengue prevention campaign or passing by and hearing the news of a new case into the streets by family televisions.    

Though the mosquitos may flourish in the rain, the people stop and congregate in the shelter of jutting roofs.  In my attempt to stick out as much as possible, I keep walking in my bright baby blue rain jacket.  When the mood strikes, skipping and singing in the rain, what a glorious feelin,’ I’m happy again.  Meanwhile Nicas don umbrellas which are used both as a shield from the oppressive force of the sun and the pelting rain.

Though you might think the rain would be cause for some of the serious rain boots you’d find in surplus at the local market, you’d be wrong.  My counterpart informs me that these boots are mostly for the campo, or rural areas.  In the city, you don’t have to worry about the increasingly profound mud.  However, the color blocked flats I’ve worn to work won’t hold up.  They seem moments away from floating off of my feet.  I trade them out for my black Chaco’s.

I’ve heard of weeks on end without the rain yielding.  Of volunteers unable to leave their homes or go to work for weeks at a time.  Given that I’m already bathing in both repellent and hydrocortisone cream, I find it difficult to imagine.  For now, it’s simply a tale.  

Central Park in full bloom.  It happened virtually overnight because of how strong the rain is.