Hail and Dust storms

Harvesting "nere" seed to make into a sauce. This is my host sister Nawa.
One of the many mud stoves that the women have built to save firewood.
A village elder making traditional cotton fabric on his loom.

Yesterday afternoon I rode into the bush to get my friend Calita and ride into Sikasso. We got roped into drinking a round of tea and finally managed to get on the road at 4:15, a bit late, and with dark clouds building up in the Eastern sky that we were riding towards. The air was hot, heavy, humid, ready to burst.

Packs of schoolkids raced past us on their one speed bicycles, and when we reached the big mango groves 5 miles out of M'Pedougou, the wind blasted down the road upon us and within minutes the sky started pelting pebble-sized-hail, raining down in sheets and bouncing across the road. I was laughing so hard I could barely hold my bike up in the wind. I ran off the road to find shelter under a mango tree, but the hail started knocking down mangos, so I stood out in the open and was thankful for my bike helmet.

When the hail passed we started riding again in a gentle rain, laughing and savoring the novel sensation of goose bumps. An hour later, as we crested a hill we were met by another blast of wind and a wall of brown fog. I said, 'Is this a duststorm?' Calita responded, 'I don't know but let's get out of it, whatever it is.' We pushed our bikes DOWNhill into the wind, dust flying towards us and sticking to our wet skin, swirling into our eyes and teeth and ears. We turned off the road towards a little village that we were passing, pushing our bikes between some huts and looking for signs of life. A man came out and said, 'Come, get inside. We'll wait out the storm.' We ducked into his hut just in time. Chunks of dirt and sand and rock pummeled the tin roof, and at one point the wind lifted the corner and I thought for sure it was going to fly off, but it didn't. We huddled for 20 minutes, until it had subsided and we had to get going to make it to Sikasso before dark. What an afternoon.

This morning we did our radio show - we discussed global warming: What is it? What causes it? What can we do to lessen it? What can we do to mitigate its effects? We gave a big shout out to all the women in M'Pedougou who had built mudstoves. It was a fun show; I'm getting into the groove now and I like the chance to share ideas with a lot of people all at once.

Until next week; this is Sita Bengaly.