You just ate a tube of ice cream and French fries for dinner in village. While you did share the melty bits of the former that you couldn’t finish with your cat, a significant portion of that tub of ice cream now sits in your stomach. And you’re ok with that because it’s the first time in 22 months that there has been a tub of ice cream in front of you to eat in one sitting.
Around this time last year, I remember waking up cold for the first time in Benin. There’s this time in between the mini-hot season and the in-your-face-you-will-sweat-for-the-next-three-months hot season when the wind comes from the north and it gets dusty and dry and in the evenings and mornings, cold.
We’ve been waiting for this time to come again this year, when Monday, I was teaching 6th grade and I noticed something happening: all my students were slowly moving over to a group of tables at which no one normally sat. Every time I looked over there, another student had crept over while my back was turned and was trying to act like he’d been taking notes there the whole time.
I was walking around the room checking on my students’ progress on taking notes about the simple present tense when I realized what was going on. The sun was shining on that group of desks. And like cats, my students who had found themselves under prepared for the weather this morning in just their short sleeve uniforms were trying to find as much warmth as possible from any source possible.
The cold season has arrived.