Rain, rain fly away

Last weekend, Dar es Salaam was subjected to long, drizzly rains interspersed with cloudbursts which even drove an Oregonian like me to covered patios. Traffic moved at a snail's pace, each vehicle taking turns to cross the intermittent pools straddling the road. A cemetery was marked by a solitary cross rising above the waterline. A driveway snaking its way to a presumably well-off house looked like a river, eddies and all.

That night, after drying off, I sat on a friend's couch reading a book about adventures and misadventures of anthropologists and ecologists in Tanzania. I heard a faint flutter of sound behind me and turned to see 30-40 termites around the light I was reading by, a modest affair to be sure. Then I noticed termites flying around a safety light outside, looking remarkably like snow - climbing and falling - as they fluttered around the beam; rather apposite given the Holiday carols I was playing at the time.

As I returned to my book, something struck me. I had been hearing the sound of rain for thirty minutes or more, but as I looked at the termites outside, there was no sign of rain.

I turned the music down. What was that sound?

I did what many in Tanzania have done before me. I put my book down, ventured into the foyer and braced myself for the inevitable.

Hundreds, perhaps a thousand inch-long termites swarmed the back porch light, and many had made their way through the ill-fitted glass doors to the inside; termites swarmed in column inside and out.

I skittered around the storm to get up the staircase and switch-off my bedroom light, wanting to avoid a similar swarm there.

As I returned to my book, the drone of the termites subsided, and again I became aware of a new sound: this time of the pounding surf of the Indian Ocean.

Or so I hoped...