What season did you say it is?

                Theresa is already home in Seattle, but I still have a few more days in Accra, where, incidentally, it is currently 53 degrees warmer than it is back where she is. Or make that HOTTER. So the blog must go on!

                We have talked a lot about whether they do or don’t have what we think of as “seasons” here. The length of day never varies; the temperatures never cool down. There is supposedly a wet season and a dry season, although nobody really agrees on when each will start and end.

                But you do see changes in the vegetation – and one of them, in the past month, has been a number of trees on campus suddenly bursting into quite lovely bloom. The ones in the photo are typical – we pass these on the way to the swimming pool. We don’t have any idea what makes trees suddenly bloom when what we think of the triggers of springtime (thawing ground, longer days) simply don’t exist. Perhaps it is because it has been sooooo dry now for such a stretch, which people tell us will last until maybe next March. But it adds a nice visual highlight!

                The dry weather also means there is pink sandy dust everywhere, including in the air. The guy sitting in an open stall selling phone airtime over near the fruit and vegetable is now wearing a filter over his nose and mouth and protective glasses, because he’s right next to a busy dirt roadway. A more attractive result of the dust is that when the sun sets these days outside our kitchen window, it is a huge, enormous red ball – very spectacular.

                Meanwhile, in another topic I’m touching on because it is related to the natural world (can you tell that I’ve been teaching my journalism students about transitions?), here’s another odd sight on campus. Right near those colorful trees there’s a large football (soccer) field. Lately, it has been populated by two clumps of very big birds: loud, obnoxious black and white crows; and the slightly scary looking black vultures that also roost in tall trees on campus.

                Not quite sure what they’re doing there, but they definitely are hanging out in their two groups, sizing each other up a bit but mostly staying on their own. It almost makes you think that if you tossed a football out there, they’d move it down the field. Goodness knows they’re big enough to do it…