Here Comes The Rain. Again.

Falling on my head like a ton of bricks.

Annie Lennox certainly wasn't singing about the rainy season in Addis Ababa, that's for sure. I'd only experienced the rains in April, and naively thought the summer rains just lasted longer. It didn't occur to me that they would be an entirely different beast.

"It's hot today," said our friend Anteneh. "BIG rain come."

Boy, howdy, did it ever.

We had made our way over rocky, dusty paths to a little shop in the Merkato, Africa's largest open-air market, searching for some gifts to bring home. As our intrepid interpreter Muday haggled with the owner (who was angling for five times what she thought we should pay), the sky split down the middle. The noise on the tin roof of the store was astonishing. As in shouting-at-the-top-of-your-lungs-with-your-lips-to-the-other-person's-ear astonishing. The little path we had taken to the store was a roaring stream about a foot deep in less than five minutes.

Steve and I, who have both lived through the rainy season on Guam, had never seen anything like it.

Until the following day, that is. Here's a video I took from the porch of the school that Muday runs in Addis. The little white pellets are hail (hail yes, at the Equator!)

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Monkey See

You know that moment when, you first wake up and ... something's not quite right but you can't put your finger on it?

I heard a scuffling noise. And a pill bottle rattling. I sat up under our mosquito netting and stared, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged at what appeared to be a grey cat. Large haunches and a tail. My husband, in the most matter-of-fact, dead-pan voice said: "There is a monkey in our room."

The creature raised its head above my suitcase, and a what-would-have-been-adorable-in-a-zoo-but-not-in-my-bedroom monkey face stared back at me. He had my prescription arthritis medication in his little monkey hands and was studiously trying to open the child-proof cap.

Seriously? A monkey?! What the ...

I didn't even know there WERE monkeys in Awassa, much less that they would invite themselves in for an intimate perusal of my intimate apparel. Visions of a crazed monkey trying to get at us through the mosquito netting flashed through my head, but apparently instinct took over.

I clapped my hands like I used to do to my cat Boo when she was being naughty: "GET *clap* OUT *clap* OF *clap* HERE *clap clap clap* "


And like some weird little vision, he jumped up on the windowsill, gave me one last pitying glance, and hopped out through the window.

Which I had left open. D'oh! *forehead slap*

Husband to the rescue. Window shut. Both of us staring out the screen at the monkey who was completely nonplussed at the sound of the window slamming and who jumped, quite nonchalantly, up on the little parapet next to our room, brazenly giving us a view of his bright blue balls.

No lie. They were day-glo blue. A nice little "bon-voyage" from Curious George. The children's books just don't do him justice.