GOOD RAINS

On New Years Day in Maun, it started raining, it rained and rained for hours. Not gentle, torrential pounding rain. I dont remember experiencing rain like it here before. When it started to dissipate later in the afternoon, we went for a drive around town. There was no low ground in Maun, it was all water! Maun looked like the Okavango Delta! The Thamalakane River was flowing after having dried up after the last flood earlier in the year. Water was flowing through the old bridge into the hippo pool. We counted four very happy hippos as their dirty stagnant wallow turned to a flowing river. Everywhere, there were scenes of flooded houses, thatched mud huts standing in huge pools, cars up to their windscreens in water, fallen trees, islands of corrugated iron roadside shops along the road. I photographed two people paddling their galvanised tin bathtubs through a stretch of water to get to their drowned car. Somebody recorded 140mm of rain in four hours that day. It rained in Maun almost every day in January, since Christmas. The rainfall over the subcontinent has been widespread, and apparently Angola, the Okavango Rivers source, has had very good rains too.
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