The hot season

As any of you who have spoken to me since I got to Mambwe know, Mambwe is hot. Not UK hot very very hot! I think many people who asked me how is Zambia to begin with got “hot” as a response. The year in Zambia is split into several “seasons” the wet and dry are the two main ones. There is also some times that are sweltering and other times where it is just hot. We have just begun the rainy season which will last until around April when it will become the dry season again.

When I say hot it doesn’t mean hot like on your holiday to Portugal or Spain. The temperature here regularly got to 40^oC in September and October. It was so much hotter than I’d ever experienced. It did cool down over night but not all that quickly. It got to about 22^oC by the morning but didn’t get much cooler than that. In the day it got very hot by about 8am which was in the second lesson of the day.

The heat really affected the children in class. They got gradually more sluggish towards midday when lessons finish. Many of them would fall asleep on the desks just because of the temperature. There were also a lot more of them out of class due to being ill or dehydrated as they don’t seem to drink enough water. They do have access to running water at the dorms but many don’t bring bottles to class. It made teaching hard as I was struggling with the heat and they were struggling with concentrating on the lesson but it was like that for the first month or so. That meant you just had to deal with it. Of course this problem could be solved by putting in ceilings in the classrooms as the roofs radiate so much heat into the classrooms like I mentioned in another post. Also they could install air conditioning in all the rooms however these all cost a lot of money especially when there are around 20 classrooms here!

The staff room was always hot (and still is often) it has a standard air conditioning unit but the room is way too large for it to be effective as the roof lets too much heat in. The summer hut is a nice place to sit since its probably the coolest place to sit. It’s a circular area with a thatched roof like you would imagine a hut to have but it has open sides. This means it is always in the shade and if there is a breeze you can benefit from it. The only problem is there isn’t that much space in there so you can’t always manage to work there.

The heat made sleeping quite challenging. Since by the time you are trying to go to sleep it had often only cooled to the mid-thirties. I quickly realised that a sheet was not an option and pyjamas made it a lot warmer. I would often wake up soaked in sweat and find I have to peel myself off the bed and move to a dry area (just thought I’d give you the full picture). We had fans but I was reluctant to use them as sometimes having a constant breeze like that gives me a dry throat. But I gave in eventually and it made quite a large difference. I don’t need to use it now but I rarely woke up even with the noise from the fan and, as long as I had some water, my throat was fine.

We still find that eating hot food makes you very warm and start sweating. Cooking was even worse. We have both taken to wearing no t-shirt when we are in the house as its much cooler. However when people such as students come to the house to ask for things. I find it a little awkward so usually put something on before they talk to me. It does get so hot that when you are just siting it makes you sweat. It makes you feel like you want a shower as soon as you have had one because you feel dirty straight away. But having multiple showers a day only really cools you down temporarily so I don’t bother.

The sky was very rarely cloudy. The strange thing about Zambia, to me at least, is that when there are clouds unless it’s between December and April its almost certain that it wont rain! It seems strange and I’m not sure exactly why but it didn’t rain once from when we arrived in Mambwe until mid-October and then even after that it wasn’t until about 2 weeks ago that it started properly raining.