Crash! Zap! Boom!

         They DO have their thunderstorms here! More dramatic than anything I ever experienced, even growing up on the east coast and making regular visits to the midwest, which is proud of ITS storms. We noticed that in our first trip; the thunder has a deeper rumble, a longer duration, an intensive, building wave of sound.
          When we visited Murchison Falls last month there was another big one the night we stayed on the Nile. I even got up to enjoy it, and at one stage found myself counting the seconds between flashes of lightning. Literally, for 20 minutes there was never more than a single second without a burst of light; the river was illuminated, churned up by the winds. Exciting and dramatic!
         Last night's entry in the thunderstorm sweepstakes was highlighted by the force of the wind, and the intensity of the rain. Combined, they created a horizontal wall of water in the middle of the night, sending water straight through our living room screen and soaking the floor 10 feet away (soaking me, too, as I slipped and slid across the floor to close the windows).
        When it rains like this, you feel a little like you are IN the River Nile. A full-fledged waterfall cascaded down from the rooftop drain just past our bathroom window, and as always, any street outside suddenly becomes a torrent of rushing water, red mud and garbage flowing to a new location.
       But it passes in a few minutes...and with any luck, the badly polluted air of Kampala will be a bit cleaner, at least for a few hours!