Harmattan

The Sun During Harmattan Season
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It is Harmattan here. What is Harmattan, you ask? It is the dry, dusty, sandy wind that blows through West Africa every year from December to February (only it kept up until late March last season and started in early November this season). The sands from the Sahara whip across the continent and create a fine grain, slow moving, strangling sand storm that grounds planes, blots out the sun and causes respiratory problems for all. Ok, at least for me. My asthma isn't overwhelming and I usually live with it sans medicines. Harmattan is, however, keeping me in a low state of asthma attack all the time. I am exhausted and in pain. There could be 2 1/2 more months left of Harmattan and it is scary. The good news is that I get a break and will be out of here for a while. The bad news is I will come back to it much too soon. It is hard to describe Harmattan. It looks foggy or hazy all of the time. We can't see across the river to the port or the mainland for large portions of each day. The wind howls at times like a pack of circling wolves. The wind blows hard enough to open locked windows. You can taste the sand and feel it in your hair and on your skin. It doesn't look like sand; it lays on the furniture like dust. It seeps into every crack, every crevice, every nook and every cranny. There is no escaping it. It smells like sand, is gritty like sand but is as fine as powder. I imagined sand storms (and had the opportunity this year in another country to be caught in one that was like my imagnation) to be fast and furious and noisy and painful and able to obliterate sight and sound ....... for a short time. Not here. This is long and slow and subtle.


Harmattan viewed from the beach
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