Glorious British Weather
It seems to be raining a bit here at the moment.
Last year, apparently, Windhoek had six days of rain. This year so far we’ve had nineteen straight, and there’s no sign of it letting up. The city is a maze of little rivers. Cars driving along the roads look like jet-ski joyriders, throwing walls of water five feet up in the air as they pass by. Rain here isn’t nice, delicate pitter-pattery rain. Oh no. It decapitates garden flowers, and strips the paint from cars*.
I’m sitting in an office that has only two small windows. The light is a 40 watt bulb, and it’s practically dark outside thanks to the thick layers of cloud bunching up over the city, waiting until everyone is lulled into a false sense of security by a five minute hiatus before they drop a ton of water onto the rooftops in the space of 2.4 seconds.
Namibia has an ad campaign that promises ‘300 days of sunshine’. Egypt had one too, for the Red Sea coast. It said something like “The land of eternal sunshine”, and promised year-round opportunities for pale British folk to turn themselves into scrofulous lobsters. If you’ve ever been to the Red Sea in December you’ll know that it’s about as tropical as Great Yarmouth. I had to cut short a snorkelling expedition in Ras Mohammed National Park because they were all showing symptoms of hypothermia. Anyway, I digress. 300 days of sunshine probably isn’t far wrong, although at the moment, it doesn’t feel that way.
Anyway, the thing that concerns me right now is that I’m wearing flip flops, a t-shirt and a skirt, and it’s pissing it down outside in a manner that would put Wales to shame.
I’m going to get very, very wet, and quite cold on my way home.
*Don’t get me wrong. It’s a very good thing. Rainfall in Namibia is extremely limited, and access to water is a major problem.