Rainy Season, day 3

Well, it appears that rainy season has come early; usually, it doesn't start until November.  However, in mid-October we started having afternoon thunderstorms come down off the mountain, which is a sign that it's coming. Fortunately, I finally got around to buying rainboots on Sunday, and I wore them for the first time today.

It rained lightly on Monday, but then it was cloudy both Tuesday and Wednesday but only sprinkled. Today it's raining steadily.

Lewis called and said he and Babadeo (Albert) were going into town for supplies for the school duka (store) and could pick me up on the way back to go to the school for my afternoon classes. I would be quite early, but my students needed a substitute for an earlier class time, so I could help with that (spoiler alert: that didn't happen). So Rebecca and I hopped in.

It's a long story, but the culvert between the school driveway and the, well, not paved, but hard-packed road running by the school has been out since before I moved here.  The local department of transportation were the ones who dug it up last time they were repairing the roads (at the end of the last rainy season, so around June), and they refuse to fix it back, saying that the school should pay to fix it (even thought they messed it up).  Anyhow.  We've gotten around the issue thus far by driving up the cow path that runs between the road and the school fence; there's a place without a ditch around the corner that we can turn onto it.  This has been a bit bumpy and involves the occasional traffic jam of cows (it is actually their road, after all), but has been workable all through dry season.

It will not work so well in rainy season.  We were in the big four-wheel-drive landrover, which is built for bad roads, so we gave it a try.  We made it about halfway around, sliding a bit (the mud here is like driving on ice) before we finally got stuck.  We managed to back up a bit and try a few running starts, but the mud was deep everywhere, and finally we ended up wedged at an awkward angle up against a very large jute plant.

Rebecca and I stayed in the car and observed the proceedings while Lewis and Albert tried various things to no avail.  Finally Albert walked up to the school and got the work crew who are building the new administration building to come down and help.  The group of men managed to rock the car enough that Lewis could get it unwedged from the rut by the jute plant, and then he managed to back us all the way back out to the road.

We finally managed to park at the clinic; from there we can walk through their back garden to a little gate that opens onto school grounds back behind the classroom building.

We're three days in.  Is rainy season over yet?