Rain

On Tuesday it rained for the first time since I arrived. I’m not talking about the grey drizzle that covered this city through August, nor the misty cloud that chilled most of my morning drives to school. This was a true rain, complete with black clouds and thunder. Like a spring rain in Florida, the heavens opened and drenched the earth for about an hour. Little did I know that a “spring rain” here in Nairobi has the same crippling effect on traffic as an snow storm in Georgia – paralyzing. People don’t know how to drive in the rain. Without stoplights and traffic officers, progress comes to a halt. I experienced part of this. A friend and I spent two hours trying to get to a restaurant that would, on a normal night, have taken us 15 minutes to reach. School bus drivers had the worst of it. The late buses left at 5pm and the last kids didn’t get home until 9:30pm! All because of an hour’s worth of heavy rain. Not a monsoon, not a hurricaine … rain. I think Nairobi is in serious need of some civil engineers.