Mangunde Shorts, Part Two

April.  Ahhh.  A breath of clean, cool air fills my lungs.  It just happened one day.  I was sitting in my room correcting tests, the fan blowing in my face trying to dodge the heat that had been lying on top of us like a thick blanket.  It was midday, but suddenly it was dark.  The front door slammed shut with a loud thud.  The windows flew open violently and clattered against the wall.  The posters on the wall were tossed up in the whirlwind, pulled free from the nails that held them on.  Outside dust kicked up and blew tempestuously.  The trees groaned, bending and swaying unnaturally.  Was it a tornado?  Hurricane?  A super-hero arriving from the future?  I half expected to see Arnold Swarzenegger standing in the yard naked.  I stood on my veranda, watching the spectacle.  Caught in a torrent of dust, kids covered their mouths with their shirts and ran for cover. 

Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, it was over.  The dust settled and a quiet sprinkle of rain seemed to float down to earth like feathers.  But something was different.  Something had changed.  The rain had brought with it something new, something fresh.  It was cold.  I touched the rain drops that had settled on my hair as I stood there.  They were cold.  Frigid.  Then I noticed the air.  As if the tempest had literally filled its cheeks, and with one forceful exhalation, blown out the hot stagnant air.  There was now a prickly coolness in the air.  I could feel it run into my nostrils and fill my lungs.  It was as if someone had looked up into the sky and reminded whoever is in control up there, “Hey, it’s April..” and then, asleep at the wheel, they flipped on the switch and brought this sudden and bursting transformation.

I have my doubts though.  I’m reminded of April back in Wisconsin.  Locked in a dark seasonal depression, April comes.  One day, the nascent sun, feeling empowered by Spring, cuts through the cold air and starts to melt the snow.  Soon, you are outside in shorts and t-shirts proclaiming the end of Winter and inaugurating the birth of Spring.  Naïve.  I used make a bet with my Dad every April.  He would guarantee that this was a false positive, an aberration.  It will snow again.  Don’t put your hats and coats in the closet yet.  I would confidently frolic outside, play basketball in the melting snow and deny that this could all be a mirage, a fake, the season playing a cruel trick on us.  I would lose this bet, year after year.  A week later a snowstorm would blow in unexpectedly and bury us again.  On this side of the world I wonder if Mozambican fathers are making the same kind of bet with their sons.  Outside, frolicking, playing soccer in the now tolerable temperatures, sure that this crisp air is here to stay kids obdurately deny their fathers.  “It will be hot again, you just watch little Timmy..”

We will see.