October in Africa

October in Africa.

Zambia is a country in Africa. It is also where I live. In October Zambia gets very hot and very dusty and also very dry. Many villages and farmers worry that this year the sky will not bring enough rain or sometimes too much rain. It is very important for the rain to be the right quantity because if there were too much it would soak all the crops that the citizens of Zambia have worked through out the year for. We also mostly worry about not getting enough rain, Zambia could go into a draught this year and that could mean not enough water to supply the people, vegetation or the wildlife.

Everybody in Zambia can hardly wait for the sky to break open and for the rain to water our gardens and fields. We normally expect rain towards the end of October or the beginning of November. We can also expect rain when we hear the beetles and the crickets singing, their singing is the noise everyone recognizes as the song for rain. We can also expect rain when ants start to move their eggs; they carry them to a deeper nest where the eggs can hatch safely without getting washed away by the rain. We can also expect rain when days get very, very hot. Everybody in Zambia is very excited for the rain and the thunderstorms.

Although at this time of year we think of only the worries and the amount of rain that we might receive Zambia does look it’s most beautiful in October.

When you drive around the cities or even the villages our trees start to flower. Our most famous tree is a tree called the Jacaranda. It grows very large and its branches are filled with thousands of purple flowers. All the Jacaranda trees flower at the same time so if you see a whole row of Jacarandas on the side of a street it looks like a sea of purple. They really are beautiful and because October and November are the only months that they bloom in everybody takes’ the opportunity to photograph them.

I can’t wait until December because then another type of tree starts to bloom. It is called the Flamboyant. This time the trees’ branches are filled with thousands of red flowers, you can hardly see any green leaves because the red flowers stand out so much. If you open the flower the petals really do look like flames because there is a certain pattern that reminds you of a flame. However they only come during the rainy season because they are big trees and need a lot of water to rely on.

Livingstone is a small town in Zambia where one of the Seven Wonders of the World lives. It is Victoria Falls also known as Mosi-O-Tunya (The smoke that thunders). When you listen to Victoria Falls it sounds like thunder and the water vapor that rises from it looks like smoke that is why the villages named it “the smoke that thunders.” The best time to visit it is during October because the water pressure is much more heavier. This happens because the Zambezi River, which is its source, tries to make room for all the other water it will be receiving which is the rain.

Everyone in Zambia looks’ forward to October for many of these reasons and I’m looking mostly forward to the day just before the rainy season begins because the weather gets humid and gives of the rain smell, which smells just like a freshly cut lawn.


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Milkyway