When the flowers fall from the flamboyants...

Is when the rain starts to come, according to Kara.  When we arrived at the fancy hotel for our getaway, I noticed some flowers on the ground from the flamboyants.  It was starting to cloud over.  The grey was setting in...

The sky then began to turn yellow. Besides in Mali, the only other place I've seen the sky so yellow is when the eye of Hurricane Alicia passed over Houston when I was 10. The color in these pictures is true...





We saw heat lightening as we ate dinner and awaited the downpour that never came, well, at least not while we were awake.

When we got back home, the humidity became more unbearable. We heard thundering one afternoon, lots of wind, and the sound of people running for shelter. A big storm was on its way. And then the sound of a giant faucet being turned on and the sky literally opened up. Our street became a river within minutes...

Ignore our silly family banter. I don't call Ian daddy, I promise. I was translating for Marshall who thought the splatter from the rain was the funniest thing he'd ever seen and was gesturing towards Ian as if to explain himself.

When I first opened the door to see the rain, three boys and one girl, all around 9 or 10 where hopping down the street and ran towards our open door as if they were looking for shelter. They asked me for mangos, which I thought was weird, because we don't have a mango tree and was sure that I must have misunderstood them. They were all in their undies and all freezing and confused wondering if they could seek shelter in our portico or not. They kept running in circles, kinda trying to come in, but stopping when they saw me. I stood there not quite sure what to do as they asked me for mangos and yelled to Ian in the most ridiculous way, "There are children coming inside and they are asking for mangos." The girl was shivering and I realized they would normally run inside an open door and was about to bring them in and give them all towels when Ian walked up. He smiled smugly and in a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kinda voice, he looked at the girl, specifically, and said, "You cold?"  I asked where her house was and it wasn't far, she could seek shelter there if she wanted to. The boys asked Ian for mangos and we realized they were referring to the mangos from our neighbor's tree that they thought was in our house. The girl looked at me pleadingly, Ian said something else smug and they left, the poor girl almost losing her flop along the way.