The Wet Season Crisis

The subject of the wet season crops up in conversation regularly.  Not so much for the potential humanitarian crisis, but just for a change from the relentless dry.  Normally, I would check my facts with a meteorology service, but it seems like it has rained about twice in the last 8 months.

From about a month ago, the humidity ramped up but although there has been the odd afternoon with dark clouds, there has been nothing.

Maybe I should get out more but I have still not seen a water storage dam in the country yet.  Groundwater appears to be an very important resource.

Anyway, a result of the endless dry period is bare hills.  These are the same bare hills that I could hardly believe possible when I first arrived in the wet season. The ground is gravelly and where there is no gravel, powdery bulldust.

So this is what the people in the IDP camps face.  Bulldust plus a couple of deluges and they will turn into mud and sanitation will be a nightmare issue.  The deluges themselves may drive some of them back to their old homes (if they still exist).  Yeah, it will be difficult.