Since arriving here in Ghana one of the topics on our minds the most has been the weather. Even though we left the US during a pleasantly warm Wisconsin May, the almost-permanent heat and humidity in the south of Ghana was debilitatingly intense. I don’t think the temperature ever dropped below 70F throughout training. It would usually start out in the upper 70’s at dawn and ratchet up into the 90’s by about four or five in the afternoon, when the sun started to make its hasty retreat toward the horizon (on the equator the period of “twilight” is shorter). So, if you are getting up at 6am to take advantage of the cooler time of day (and if you are serious about getting sleep), that means you are going to bed between 9 and 10pm, when it is just a shade cooler than the hottest time of the day. In a word, it is miserable. I have adapted by using the warm-weather clothing I stocked up on before leaving the US: nylon khaki pants, thin cotton polos, poly performance shirts. I could count on my fingers the number of days I have worn close-toed shoes here. Why no shorts? Well, teachers are encouraged to look professional, as appearance counts for quite a bit (most days my counterpart wears pants and a long-sleeve dress shirt, and dress shoes). Here in northern Volta we are outside the “southern sauna,” but relief is fleeting. Kpassa is on the border between forest and savanna. Just ten miles to the south you will see tall trees blanketing the slopes of the Togolese mountains. Around here the mountains are a bluish mirage on the horizon, and trees are only sparsely scattered across the land. Even in the wet season, which just ended in November, the humidity is generally lower than in the south. The sun, though, feels more intense, maybe because there is less moisture in the atmosphere through which to penetrate. On a completely clear day, it is like you were shoved into an oven. By mid-day, the few people that don’t have work to do (read: men) are sitting under mango trees, waiting for the sun to take a more bearable angle. On school days I have at least two fifteen minute sessions with the sun on my bike ride to and from. Market days take an extra dose of gumption, as the ride is 30 minutes one way (I skipped market yesterday for lack of gumption). In the states I loved biking, for the exercise and the pleasant feeling of air rushing past my face. Here I loath it, mainly because the air that rushes past doesn’t rush at all, but feels like hot, sticky, tasteless jello. After a heavy rain there is some relief, as the sun’s work of burning the earth has been doused by water. Some evenings, when I bathed I could see steam coming off my arms and chest, a combination of the lower temperature and high humidity. How much lower? Still solidly in the 70’s.
Now that the rains have stopped the new meteorological feature is a phenomenon called “harmattan.” I think it will make me wish for the heat and humidity to return. Supposedly it is much cooler at night, though I’m not sure what that means (60’s maybe? Ghanaians don’t have thermometers and their definition of cold is anything below 80). In the day it is still scorching, though the lack of humidity provides some relief. Oh, and there is dust. Winds come down from the Sahel (maybe even the Sahara?) and blow dust across the land until everything is a shade of ruddy earth. The grasses dry up quickly, and people here like to catch bush meat by burning large swaths of bush and wait for the animals to escape fire only to be trapped or shot (sounds fair, right?), and the fires get stoked by wind and get out of control quickly. They can burn for months until the rains come again. Even at the beginning of the season, I have seen my share of plumes on the horizon, and the horizon itself is hazier even than in the cloud-heavy wet season.
After harmattan, in February and March, they tell me it gets hot. How hot? Well, hotter than any other season. I personally don’t think it’s possible that it could get any hotter. The only thing you can do, apparently, is drink plenty of water (Gatorade, even) and sleep outside (the heat is too unbearable to sleep inside). So I have made hammock anchors for the courtyard wall for when the time comes.
Finally, in June, the rains come again to cool things down a bit, and the cycle repeats. At least in a normal year. I have already heard of anomalies to these seasons, the most stark one being that the wet season lasted at least a full month longer than expected. Will it compensate for this with a wet season that starts one month later? I have heard weather in West Africa can vary significantly from the norm. On top of that, if I ask five people about the seasons I will usually get five different answers. So I guess I’ll just find out when it happens. That last realization is especially tough for me, being that I was addicted to weather and forecasting (I checked the temperature and radar ten times a day). I will probably seem strange when I come back to the states because when someone asks me about the weather I will probably just look up and guess at what will happen next.
