Seasons

Growing up in the Florida Keys, seasons meant very little to me. In fact, there were barely seasons at all, at least not the ones they taught in schools: Winter, spring, summer, fall. There was soccer season and softball season. There was hurricane season. There was summer and there was the school year. Other than that, except for the few cold fronts that blew in every once in a while, “season” was a useless term.

I experienced the changing of seasons for the first time when I lived in Germany. I watched leaves change and fall, get covered up by snow and give way to green sprouts. But still, what was a season to me? Most importantly, it was a change in wardrobe. In Boston, I started wearing a second pair of pants in October and wouldn’t go back to a single pair until March or April. I got out my huge, calf-length black coat and my massive, waterproof boots. The sandals went away until the weather was warm enough again. But other than that, what really changed? I went to school if there was school, worked if I had work. My diet was almost completely unaffected. Sure the landscape would change from colorful to brown to white to green, but it was still the same old landscape, same old city.

Here, seasons have a whole new meaning. When I arrived in Mogode, I thought I lived in the desert. Everything was brown. What little that was green was surely dead by May. In the distance, I could see sparse trees and rolling brown hills covered in what felt like cat-litter. Not exactly the sands of the Sahara, but still lifeless. People spent their time sitting underneath trees on piles of peanut shells, trying to escape the sun, cracking peanuts for hours. The only breaks in their day were changing from one chore of cooking to another of sweeping.

But with the rain, all that changed. Overnight, my town changed. I went for a bike ride the other day and got completely lost because everything looks so different. Plants and crops have sprouted up everywhere. There is hardly a space that isn’t covered in green. I don’t live in a desert anymore. Up until last week, when I walked into my latrine, I walked into a rainforest! There was grass higher than my waist and random plants growing up everywhere. (I cleaned it all out, afraid of snakes, but it was cool while it lasted).

People are so busy. They go to their fields at 6 am and stay until 6 pm. They work hard and eat well for the first time that I’ve ever seen. Walking through town in the middle of the day is like walking through a ghost town. The restaurants are all abandoned, the stores all closed up. Even the hospital is slow. They operate with a skeleton staff and take turns going out and caring for their fields. There are hardly any patients.

Our diet has changed. I’ve been able to find fresh vegetables like spinach, cucumbers, eggplant! It’s amazing. It’s a completely different country with the arrival of just a little rain.

Also, there’s less electricity. Hard rains wash away the power lines, leaving us in darkness for days or weeks at a time. As I write this, I’m using a battery powered by a solar panel and sitting in a room filled with candlelight.

There’s water again. Months ago, people went weeks without bathing or washing their clothes, simply because they didn’t have water. Now all they have to do is stick a bucket out in the afternoon and they’re set for a day or two. People are cleaner and mostly healthier. Dry canyons became overflowing rivers, ripping through the trees and plants that dared to grow in the dry river beds.

But with the rain come mosquitoes and health misconceptions that threaten these people’s health. Children wake up having scratched mosquito bites to infection in the night. Malaria is starting to affect this region. Women, who believe you can’t drink water and work, suffer from dehydration headaches. The colder weather brought colds and flues.

As for me, my work is different. Everyone that I normally work with is out “au champs” working their butts off to put food on the table. So, I’ve changed up my routine too. When I’m not preparing things for the school year, I work my own little field. My neighbors planted corn, okra, and peanuts there, which I tend. I also planted my own huge garden. I’ve got squash and pumpkins, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, leeks, beans, lima beans, carrots, and herbs all peaking up out of the ground. My hands are covered in little blisters, but it’s amazingly satisfying. I’m growing food that will feed me and maybe my neighbors in the next few months. I’ve never done that before. When I was little, I remember growing tomatoes once, and lima beans for a science project in first grade. Once in college I had a parsley plant; but I ate it too quickly and it died because it didn’t have enough leaves to keep growing: whoops. I never knew if I had a green thumb or not. I guess I still don’t, we’ll see. But this is such an amazing experience. Fun and satisfying.

But bottom line is, this rainy season didn’t just bring on a rain jacket. It brought on a whole new terrain, new work, new sickness, new people, new food. This is the power of the rain! How crazy is that. It gives me a new appreciation for old mythology. The elements proscribe so much of their world. A bad harvest could mean dead children. I can understand praying to an unknown rain god to make sure that doesn’t happen. While on the other side of the world, our cushy grocery stores import food from all over the world. You can get peaches in the dead of winter. Seasons don’t mean a thing. It’s eye-opening; I understand how much of our world can be dictated by nature, and how far western culture has come from that.