First rain of the season, and first blog as well

Shortly after waking up this morning, I heard a rumbling sound, as if the neighbors next door were gunning their truck engine again. But as it grew, and didn't stop, I realized that the very first rain of the season had finally arrived.

The radio said that this rain was actually a rain that should have come last October, but was late. They said that the October rains are normally lighter, and help the farmers to prepare the soils for the real rainy season, which begins in November or December. How they can tell that this particular rain is different from the "normal" rains, I have no idea. It all looks like water falling from the sky to me.

It is my 4th month in Malawi, and my 4th job in Africa. But this is my first blog. I figured it was finally time to start one, as even the head of UNHCR in Sudan has a blog. When a man twice my age, who could get in a lot more trouble for airing the details of his work, gets a MySpace account, then I know I'm behind the times.

Plus, I finally have a decent internet connection. Well, it's slow, and unpredictable, but at least it's not dial-up.

So now I am in my office. In a few moments I will be interviewing a potential new employee at the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization in foreign aid lingo) that I work at. But for now I am just enjoying the coolness of the air now that the rain has washed out the months of accumulated heat and dust. The red soil here soaks up the water like a sponge, and leaves the air filled with a metallic smell of iron.

I find it interesting that so many women in this country are anaemic due to a lack of iron in their diet, when the soil is so rich that it is red from the iron ore. There is a phenomenon known as geophagia, which commonly occurs during pregnancy, where women feel a compelling need to eat dirt. There is a theory that this occurs because the body knows it needs iron for the baby, so it drives women to pull big chunks of soil out of the ground and eat them, mostly in private, as this isn't really dinner-party sort of behavior, even in an African village. The irony is that the women then pick up intestinal worms from the soil they have eaten, and the worms then make them even more anaemic.

So there you have a clue as to my own work and interests here in the "Warm Heart of Africa".