Hot enough for you?

It is that kind of hot, not the humid, stuffy, cloying kind of heat that comes in the rainy season. That heat makes you sweat but you grin and bear it knowing that when it rains, the heat goes. This is dry season hot, where the hills are brown and crunchy, as though someone deep fried them overnight. The green is faded and the plants flower in desperation, as though giving it their all to prove that they are still alive.

This heat makes you drink copious quantities of water that leave you unsatisfied, makes you think twice about going out to get lunch and three times about lighting the stove. The sun is merciless and you risk getting a tan from slinking out to close the gate or go to the store. The breeze when it stirs swishes around bringing temporary respite.

The temptation to fight the dog to lie on the cool tiles of the bathroom is strong, but he eyes you somewhat quizzically and you settle for a space in front the fan that circulates what else, hot air. Your brain chugs along, enervated, so that you drowse lazily,  loath to move unless you have to. Good for all those people who paddled furiously at this morning's Dragon Boat meet, they have much more will power than the rest of us.

The hillsides have burnt this dry season. After three years of mostly wet dry seasons this year it is truly, well dry. The choking smoke as the flames lick across miles of hill are a constant reminder of how easily things burn. And when the rains do come, so will the floods from the run off of the denuded hillsides.  But until then, we watch as the heat shimmers across the way and think longingly of cool fruit pops, cold drinks and deep, shady rivers.