21 Mar Chad: The rainy season

Today it's time to talk about rain, as I'm soaking wet on my bike, so I thought I'd tell you a few details of what life is like during the rainy season in the Sahel. With the arrival of water, life changes enormously, it's like the arrival of spring, love floats in the air (and even we Cro-Magnons get cheesier), the desert blooms, mosquitoes appear, rebels stop attackingetc., etc., the typical, come on.

One of the first signs of the season is the arrival of nomadic peoples, such as the Tubus of northern Chad, who follow the rains for their pastures.

The water also brings a few million huge flying cockroaches (I hate the bastards). Also, sandstorms become very frequent and it is common to be caught out of the house. It is very dangerous to drive in such a storm, and a good advice I would give is to pull over (and roll up the window, of course).

Not only we become greener with spring (and with age), also the desert changes colour and becomes (almost) as green as we are. By the way, great photo, eh

Look at the difference in two photographs I took of a village, one in the dry season and the other in the rainy season.

Let's see, for those who still have the computer in black and white, the photo above (up) is brown (dry season) and the one below (down) is green (rainy season). That's the thing about nature, it's capricious...

In a matter of minutes, such a downpour of water falls that the previously dry wadis

The rivers fill up with a lot of water and fording them is no longer so easy. Some routes that used to be covered in just a couple of days now take weeks to cover, if you get there at all. Despite the fact that the whole village helps with the fords for a "modest" fee (either you pay more than a thousand euros or you wait for days on the shore until you can wade through the water, which even my friend from Angola can't do). That's why I always travel there with my sleeping bag and a fuet, and with this to the end of the world.

The truth is that I used to have a lot of trouble fording these rivers with my car, so what I used to do was to wait and see how the others, like this donkey for example, got through...

and seeing how easy it is for the donkey to cross it, I feel more relaxed.

The truth is that on that occasion I decided not to pass, but someone in the audience (and in Africa there are always thousands of them) knew how to say the magic words that have always got me into trouble: Spanish has no co...., and I did pass.

But come on, in general life gets pretty boring, because getting anywhere is an adventure. So after a month of confinement, desperate and barely able to get out, I got on the first plane that landed there, to stretch my legs a bit.

The bad news is that instead of landing in Ndjamena, I landed in Kano, one of the most dangerous places in Nigeria, but how I managed to get out of there is another story.

and I can see from your faces that you are eager for me to tell it, so nothing, nothing, I'll tell it.