Every day the weather report says the same thing--temps in the 90s, feels like the 100s, scattered thunderstorms, chance of precipitation 50%. But it rains 100% of those days.The most common thing is some thunder in the distance and a shower that lasts about 30 minutes, usually around 4 in the afternoon. Sometimes you see enormous thunderburst clouds in the distance. A couple times we've been hit directly with thunderstorms that made us jump out of our skin--like the worst we ever saw in Iowa.
Life goes on. Some people duck inside and wait it out--like we did yesterday at a store downtown--and some people use a kind of large rubberized poncho especially for motorbikes. The vendors selling them seem to appear on the street in an instant.
One crazy thing we saw was when we had gone inside for dinner just in time. It was a kind of open air building very common here--long and narrow from the street to the alley, with no front and back walls and a high ceiling. The kitchen is just plastic laundry hampers of vegetables and meat and charcoal stoves, and the dining room is dozens of plastic tables and stools, and the waiters rush back and forth.
When the rain started, the place filled up with customers fast. And then suddently the ceiling sprung two fantastic leaks as heavy as the downspouts from a roof gutter. The furniture was scattered to make room for those waterfalls, and the waiters slipped through the puddles to keep serving the food while someone swept the water out the front door. Eventually a kid climbed up a ladder through a hatch to get between the ceiling and the roof while someone else handed him pieces of sheet metal to patch the leaks.
--Robert
