Last Sunday was an uncomfortably hot day, even by Dodoma standards! It seemed as though the heat had been building up for some time and on Sunday it reached a peak. Well, on Monday morning, to our relief, we were greeted by grey cloudy skies and by afternoon we were enjoying cool refreshing rain.
Apart from a shower about 3 weeks ago, this was the first rain since March and it signals the start of this year's rainy season. It is wonderful to have the relief from the heat and to see the countryside gradually changing from a scorched dusty brown to green again, but it also brings new challenges for the pilots.
This will be my first rainy season of flying here in Tanzania and on Tuesday I had a good introduction to it. Being the first Tuesday of the month I was due to fly a medical team from AIC in Magambua to a village called Birise, where they carry out a mums and babies clinic for the day. After Monday's rain, Tuesday started with grey skies and it looked like some weather may build up later in the day, but as I flew out towards Magambua the sky brightened a bit and our flight to Birise was uneventful. During the morning it was very humid as the moisture from the previous day's rain evapourated in the heat, and by midday some serious clouds were building up in the area. I kept a close eye on the sky and in the early afternoon I suggested to the team that they should start to pack up as the weather looked like it would be closing in soon (a difficult call to make as there were still a lot of mothers and babies waiting to be seen).
The team packed up and I readied the aeroplane, but by the time the first of the team came out to the airstrip with their bags the first drops of rain were beginning to fall. Within minutes the rain had turned into a downpour and we stood sheltering (already very wet!) under the wing of the plane for about 45 minutes while the rain poured down and small rivulets formed and ran down the slope of the airstrip. When the rain eventually eased off I asked one of the villagers for a jembe (hoe) which I used to redirect some of the streams of water which were creating little gullies in the airstrip, and after a while the strip was suitable for take-off. We set off before the weather had a chance to change for the worse again and after returning the medical team to a Magambua I flew back to Dodoma, passing many more rain showers along the way.
It is great that the rains have come and people will now be able to plant their crops, and it has already cooled the weather a little and settled the dust, but it definitely also brings with it a new set of challenges for flying.
