Rainy season blues

In the dry season Georgetown is as dusty as a Spaghetti Western set. From early in the morning the sun beats down on the steaming streets baking the brains of the stray dogs.

As the rainless months go on the trenches dry up and crack, everyone gripes about how hot it is, and a creeping anxiety grows about a possible drought. Levels in the conservancies become topics of many a semi-informed conversation.

So the advent of the rainy season is like a blessing. Manna from heaven. Gardeners can sleep in, knowing their demanding subjects are satiated. We might even relish the noise of the early morning rain on the roof, the chill in the air, and pretend we are living somewhere foreign. That rainy season rain hits different. It has a persistence that a shower from a passing cloud does not have, no matter how intense. It is a white rain that falls hard all day, not a break in the clouds as if we were all living under a large sheet.

Starting in early November the rainy days roll in, one after the other like London buses when you don’t need one. And we make our little adjustments. Housewives might hang the laundry on the bannister, husbands walk with an umbrella to work, schoolchildren wear raincoats as they jump puddles. The trendy folks dust off a denim jacket they once wore in New York giving them a certain swagger…even a sheepskin lined coat - although sweltering if a glorious afternoon sun appears.

One thing is certain. This city will flood. It’s not really Christmas if Georgetown doesn’t get one good flood. But errands must be made, so feeling damp as frogs, we drive through submerged streets trying to remember where that one pothole is which jarred our chassis and soul. And we hope the bank has a little plank of wood and some bricks so we can make it inside. Never mind their profits were more than the annual City Hall budget.

With the floods, out come the species known as homo politicus in long boots looking very serious as they listen to concerned homeowners for yet another year, and inspect the city pumps while figuring out how to avoid blame. Sometimes a sleeping pump attendant is the fall guy - poor chap getting paid next to nothing and it is the night and rainy so what do you expect when you come unannounced? Sometimes it’s a plank lodged in the pump or garbage in the trenches so the residents get blamed for their own flooding.

That’s fine. But we are also assured that the various authorities are “working assiduously to mitigate the accumulation and bring about a return to normalcy”. More pumps are on the

way and it shouldn’t happen again. We shrug, we bail out and mop up with the smell of Jeyes fluid in our nostrils.

We still refer to the December/January and May/June rains but in recent years they seem to start earlier and end later. This year for example it was as if it never stopped raining here. 2021 was not much better. Now the rains begin early November, extend into February, flow through March and April and even seep into May becoming one long November to June deluge. Perhaps that is our future and this may already be having harmful effects on traditional agricultural practices that are attuned to reliable seasons. Excessive rain in recent decades has already made West Demerara sugar production unviable; two crops for rice might become one; the delicate tomato blossoms cannot easily withstand intense showers. Excessive rainfall will see more freshwater running into the sea driving away marine species that live in saltwater. Farming and fishing may therefore become too precarious a living further persuading young people to head to the cities. Decreased mining activities would mean declines in production. Excessive rains are and will cause delays to major infrastructure projects, incurring higher costs.

Older folks say it is hotter here than in their childhood and the facts bear them out. While the average temperature has not changed much, the number of extreme heat days has. In 1965 Georgetown would have experienced 10 days with a temperature at or above 32 degrees; by 2017 it was up to 98 days. We will likely spend more time indoors and if we work outdoors, it could be in the night as construction workers in the Middle East already do. Maybe we could institute a siesta? But perhaps the bigger threat will come from rain both in its extended duration and its intensity. Precipitation data by Accuweather shows that in 2016 Guyana’s rainfall was 46% more (136.8”) than the average for the three decades from 1981 to 2010.

The Meteorological Office - or as someone recently pronounced it, the Material Logical Office - forecasts that through January 2023 we can expect: “More rain days than the usual amount; Disruption to ground transportation and possibility of landslides in hinterland areas where soil is already saturated; Disruption to outdoor activities; Less than usual number of dry days and dry spells.” Hardly a revelation.

There’s a Trinidadian man here who likes karaoke and claims he sings so sweetly he can stop the rain. Come the New Year the government needs to put him on the payroll.