Harmattan

The Harmattan comes and goes, but when it’s bad the visibility drops to a few hundred meters and you can taste the dust in the air. In an odd way it reminds me of the fogs we had in Newhaven when I was a child, the visibility was poor and you tasted salt in the air rather than dust. The sun is reduced to a pale disk, mournfully casting a reduced glow. Not that it’s much cooler, still in the 30s (80s/90s F) and completely dry, it hasn’t rained since October.

Of course everything gets covered in a layer of dust. Washing my clothes turns the water to mud and it’s impossible to get it completely out, not made easier by only using a couple of buckets of cold water frugally measured out. My body isn’t a lot better, especially after a tro-tro ride like the one I took to Salaga at the weekend down bumpy, unmade roads. I’m not sure what is tan and what ingrained dust. Anyone who knows me can imagine the state of my house.

The dust has killed the DVD drive on my laptop, so I need to find an external one to watch the pirated movies I bought, or to create copies of the training CD I was given. I’m desperately hoping that my Sony Viao will soldier on without anymore casualties. I have been making backups to an external hard disk just in case.