It rained today as soon as the day warmed up enough. Or maybe I was deceived by the wetness on the ground. For all we know, the snow could just have melted and given the appearance of the after effects of rain. The undeniable fact is that it felt wet and warm, and the air smelled fresh and beautiful. Like spring. No, like the beginning of the raining season in a tropical place.
How do seasons operate? Smells of rain stays the same wherever you go. One day you’re running in shorts in the mud of loam in the back garden of a big house, planting corn and peas and swatting roaming bees around your head, and on another, you’re looking behind your back in a lakeside house in the winter aftermath of rain with the eerie feeling of having smelt this before. The humid air, the smell of leaves and the general atmosphere of creation.
So, back to that garden, there was a notable incident that had the little boy staring for long moments at a black heap of loam where he had just buried two pieces of corn. And with a feeling of satisfaction at the work gone before – clearing the little garden, making the required ridges, adding humus from a nearby poultry farm – he stared at the ground and felt proud of himself, until a voice sounded from the house. It was his mother, peeping through the window. “It looks like you’re waiting for it to sprout already. Give it a few days. It doesn’t grow immediately.”
It is the smell of rain that usually defines those times. After months of dryness, the first few days of rain comes with a freshness that can’t be described. Add that to the pleasure of tilling the soil in an innocent attempt at farming, and you have the poetry of the season. It is sweet to the senses. The flower I tried to raise in my apartment a few weeks ago however has not survived. It may have to do with the house warmer and the absence of sunlight. Yet, life’s pleasures endure.
The snow today was more than that of Friday in that it was more than two inches high on the ground. Like Friday, I had no idea how and when it started, but I found it on the ground when I pulled apart the curtains in my room. What I did next was unthinkable, as usual. I got into thick clothing, got on my bike and rode into campus to take pictures. Luckily, the sun was still out and my new gloves were comfortable enough to hold the camera with. Anyway, these are the photos from that eventful ride. Let those who said that I won’t be able to ride my bike in the snow/winter show themselves right now. My message for them comes from that famous two-word response from the South Carolina senator. No I won’t repeat it here. 
At five o’clock this evening, I had stepped out of Aldi’s to wait for the bus to take me to campus, and then I looked up into the sky. Actually, I didn’t have to look up into the sky because everywhere around me already showed what had given me the kind of unexpected dread: it was very dark. It was not just an evening dark, but a pitch black appearance of night. I looked at my watch, and it was still five o’clock. For a moment, I thought that my watch had stopped, I had missed the bus, and I was stranded again in town, especially since everyone seemed to observe me with some kind of suppressed amusement as I stood at the bus stop. Actually, they were not looking at me. I have now classed it with the same standard response of momentary notice that I get every time I find myself standing in a public place, especially alone, and carrying two bags of groceries.
At two am on Sunday November 1st, time changed in America and everyone shifted their clocks an hour backwards, to deal with the late daylight that has 7ams looking like 6ams. Since about a week and half, I’d been noticing the fact that the day still looked very dark by 7am, and it always stayed dark until about half an hour later, so it was much of a relief to finally adjust with everybody else, and be able to get one more hour of sleep. For a change, I was also able to use the daylight saving switch button on my Nokia phone. Up until now, the function never meant anything to me other than “another American thing”. In Nigeria, we never had to change our clocks during particular seasons even though this same changes occur twice a year when the day gets shorter and the night gets longer. We didn’t change our clocks. We just adjusted ourselves to it. The changing the time part of the ritual here – I guess – is to make it “official” and generally uniform. It would be weird to get out at seven o’clock in the morning and never be able to find one’s way around because it’s still dark. But I can’t stop wondering: does Daylight Savings apply to the people of Alaska, the land of the midnight sun as well?
Here are photos from the Fall season, or Autumn, as it’s called in Europe. In Nigeria, it’s simply called the Harmattan season, even though it doesn’t start in many parts of Nigeria until later in November.
