Long rains and no hosepipe bans

We are in the midst of the long rains here - they are meant to start late march/ early April and last for about a month, where it rains most days but generally in short sharp bursts interspersed with sun. They play havoc with the roads and create traffic chaos but in a few weeks they have turned Nairobi green and colourful again as dried out grass and shrubs get a new lease of life and the hibiscus blooms.

Katie and Tim are busily planting things in small pots in our window box to make the most of the growing season and Matthew is growing kidney beans at school - he's very confident I'll never need to buy them again.

Life for many is so dependent on these rains that they are much discussed and anticipated in the weeks before they come. This year they were late and relatively light early on - but still no formal hosepipe bans. And as the food supply chain here works differently to the UK the lack of rain meant it was instantly hard to find butter in the supermarkets and sales of milk are regularly limited to a few pints per customer. In Nairobi, at least though, the rains appear to be properly here now and there have been some major storms, with sheet lightning and huge thunder claps and torrential downpours. We are all very used to the increased number of power cuts and the sound of the generator firing into action. Where we live now this happens almost as soon as the power goes off and the kids have yet to deploy their head torches to eat dinner, brush teeth etc. But they can see that time will come and are excited by the prospect, even if the reality is likely to be a different matter.


Anne