And suddenly the harmattan has arrived with a vengeance. I say that showing the bias of living in Accra, which is on the coast and therefore would be part of the last places to be affected by the wind blowing from the Sahara Desert. My friend who lives in Navorongo has been telling me about the harmattan having hit them since the second week of December.
For the past 14 years since I came back to Ghana after my sojourn in faraway places, I have been saying along with everybody that the harmattan is no longer as severe as it used to be in everybody’s recollection. This past week in Accra, I think I can safely say that the severity of the harmattan matches any that I can recollect in my youth of long ago.
Admittedly its arrival was not announced with one last big rainfall towards the end of November or the beginning of December; it simply announced itself one morning with a thick harmattan haze that reduced visibility to near zero.
Full-scale harmattan
All the indices of a full-scale harmattan are on display; everything is covered in sand and even our reliable tropical sun struggles to get a peep in. You can dust or clean all you want but a few minutes later the surface will be covered with a fine film of sand that has been blown from the Sahara Desert. The plants take the brunt of it and leaves that are still green are suddenly shrivelled and trees look sad and weary.
The nights and early mornings are cool and sometimes quite cold and it is the season that ensures you forever remember boarding school as a time of deprivation because the cold showers at this time are very cold.
In much the same way that the rainy season exposes the inadequacies of our infrastructural development, the harmattan exposes all shoddy works. You would discover that your door is not closing properly and the top of your desk is suddenly no longer smooth but warped.
If the carpenter did not treat the timber well before he made your doors and furniture, you can get away with it for much of the year but not during the harmattan. It is a pitiless wind that dries up and exposes every flaw in any furniture where the timber has not been properly treated.
This is a hard time for books also as the sand seeps in between the pages of books and wreaks havoc. The saddest room in the house is likely to be wherever there are books as the dust would take hold of them. Computers and laptops don’t fare any better as they were never meant to be subjected to such extremes of sandy weather.
The air literally crackles with dryness as the humidity falls. Normally, lower humidity should make the tropical heat more tolerable but the dryness takes a dramatic toll on the human body and soaks up all the lustre, leaving the skin dry and haggard. It is a race from the shower to putting enough cream on the body before it dries up and assumes a whitish pall. The lips and soles of the feet are especially vulnerable and require constant moisturizing or else they crack up and look awfully ugly.
Magic creams
I am told there are some magic creams on the market that cost a fortune and purport to protect you from the ravages of harmattan but those who know about these things insist good old shea butter and basic Vaseline would do the trick.
You can usually tell the children who have genuine care from those who are left to manage on their own by looking at the skin of any group of schoolchildren as they walk by with their tell-tale signs of cracked lips and whitish palled skin.
This season is a particularly hard time for those with respiratory problems. There are more people with colds, coughs and flus. The fine sands trigger asthma attacks in those who are asthmatic and the very dry atmosphere sparks spontaneous nosebleeds in some people.
Season for bush fires
It is also the season for bush fires as much of the vegetation is already bone dry and it only takes a little carelessness to set off a fire. The popular excuse for starting the fires used to be that hunters start the fires to try and smoke out animals that they can then kill. Now that bush meat has lost its allure as we wait out the Ebola viral disease, one hopes there won’t be any reason to start fires this dry season.
So could this northeastern trade wind blowing from the Sahara really be a thoroughly ill wind that blows no good for anybody? The truth is nature simply doesn’t function that way.
Even if it is not immediately obvious, there would be some advantages in the cracked lips and dry skins. The dust is so much, you are forced to clean and when the haze finally lifts; sometimes as early as the end of January but definitely by the middle of March, we shall all be forced to embark upon some major cleaning and washing.
Mosquitoes
There doesn’t seem to be as many mosquitoes as usual and that surely has got to be good news. The nights are cooler and that means it is possible to sleep without the fan on and you can let those who want to make your life miserable with DUMSOR do their worst.
Those among us who normally drive shiny cars are reduced to the same status as those who drive dusty cars. This harmattan is a leveller.
But probably the most important thing about it all is that you know it is temporary. The haze will lift just the same way it arrived. Your lips won’t need moisturizing every so often. And visibility will be restored and you can see from afar.
