The dust is everywhere: In my
nostrils and eyes and ears and in between my toes. It gets under my door and
into my house, making it seem as if I didn’t thoroughly clean the house the
week before I left for South Africa. The wind blows as if a storm is coming,
yet it’s not raining nearly as frequently or as hard as we would all like and
need. Frequently, lightning will light up the sky beyond while only a drizzle
or nothing at all falls from the sky. It’s as if the rest of the world wants to
storm, but the skies just won’t allow it.
Yesterday and today it
finally stormed, and already my skin doesn’t feel as dry.
This is how the weather was
when I came to Lesotho a year ago, and while most things about living here
don’t surprise me anymore, the dramatics of the weather here almost always
astound me. The sun beats down and makes me squint my eyes and think of New
Mexican summers visiting the fam. The wind blows so strongly that from a distance it looks
like the dust is a low hanging cloud ready to release drops at any moment, but
when walking in the midst of it forces you to cover your eyes so the particles
don’t get in and make them burn like hell. Most days begin awash in bright,
fresh light. Most of them end in awe-inspiring multi-colored sunsets that
quickly give way to a sky blanketed in stars. The sky always makes me feel
delightfully, refreshingly, small and insignificant.
The weather here is like an
outdoor traveling theater troupe, ready to strike and surprise and mystify at
any moment.
I wonder what it is exactly
that makes me feel so exposed to the elements here. Though it’s significantly
more humid in Philly, there are definitely four seasons the same as here, with
extremely cold days and boiling hot ones and days full of fresh breeze and rain
and wind. Was it the concrete that shielded me before? The tall buildings? The
indoor plumbing? The fans and the air
conditioners and the indoor heating systems? Probably all of it.
It’s new for me, this
intimate awareness of the land and the weather.
It’s teaching me things too-how the clouds look different when rain is
really coming and when they’re just putting on a mask, trying to fool you. How
to adjust my daily habits based on the outside world: I didn’t do dishes in the
morning in the winter because it was too cold to go outside that early to dump
the dishwater on my garden. How much I took water for granted at home.
By now, I’m used to thinking
about how to ration my resources on a daily basis-baking less bread and cooking
less soup uses less gas, and water that gets used for one thing is almost
always reused or simultaneously used for another: washing my hands over my dish
basin allows me to soak the dirty dishes in one go, and dirty dish water
immediately goes towards watering my (ailing) garden. These things don’t feel
very difficult anymore, they just are what they are.
But sometimes, I’ll wake up
from a dream where all I did was sit in front of the washing machine while it
washed my clothes for me, turned on a faucet anywhere and just watched water
come gushing out and cooked a meal without thinking once about how much gas I
was using and when I would need to replace the tank next.
Life will be easier in a
year, no doubt about it. And I’ll appreciate modern amenities more than ever.
I only hope I don’t end up
taking them for granted.
Khotso.
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