Rain

As we've entered the sandy part of the year, I thought I would post a few pictures from December when it rained two or three days in a row.  I should've been out of town with some friends when I took these pictures, but was violently ill after some bad curry.  The day or so before, a number of us went to an Indian restaurant in the neighboring city to have a going-away party.  Little did I know that, even though I wasn't leaving, I was to receive a parting gift.  I still can't quite eat lamb.

Afterward, as I was recovering from a vindaloo-induced delirium, I noticed that the wind was blowing through the window and it smelled like rain.  I went over, and saw that it was starting to rain.  At first it simply trickled, then suddenly all the rain that I had missed over the last four months began to fall.  A boy ran across the dirt lot in front of the apartment laughing and with his arms thrown wide open.  I have to admit that I started to tear up a little, a little because it had been so long since I had seen rain, a little because of the vision-quest level of food poisoning I had just endured, but mostly because he seemed so happy.  I decided to go up on the roof and take a few pictures.

If you'll notice in the first picture, there are no gutters or storm drains.  That's because it rains five times a year.  This may seem like a reasonable response on the part of the city planner, but the problem is that when it rains, a good bit of the city washes away.  By the time this storm was over, the puddle at the edge of the road had encroached within a few yards of the building, and a good deal of the lot was underwater.