The End of ‘Krempt’

The other day I saw a poem about ‘Sweet Summer Days’. Ah, the end of summer, especially September.
I remember them well. Loved them in North America. Now today, at Equinox, Autumn begins.

But even as my friends and family in North America will watch the days grow shorter and nights longer, the cold creep slowly in, the frost on the windows, we await the end of ‘Krempt’.

Krempt is the Amharic word for the rainy season. The rainy season is long, as long as the weather is cold in North America. From the beginning of June (this year even earlier) until the end of September, 4 months. Four long months. Rain every day, sometimes even hail. Downpours at least once a week. Cold and damp. Muddy roads and dirty floors. And don’t forget to take your umbrella everywhere, every day. The skies may look fine for the morning but storm clouds can come up quickly.

The Ethiopian holiday of Meskel is this weekend. Meskel is a religious holiday where the Ethiopian Orthodox Christians celebrate the finding of the true cross. It will be a long weekend for us. But even more important is has traditionally marked the end of Krempt. But the rainy season rarely ends on the day but sometime in October. Still it is amazing how one day the rain stops and now you enter the long season of sunshine from October to May (OK, for those who know, yes there are short seasons of light rain in February or thereabouts, but recently they have been hardly worth mentioning). Now we can travel into areas of the country with our LandCruiser that were impassable last month.

Soon will come the days of sunshine when Ethiopia will be pleasant even as I hear winter approaching in North America. I will enjoy this time, this last year of our term in Ethiopia. There are many things to do yet. Work to be done, people visiting us, a year of school for our girls. Sunshine will be a welcome reward for having endured the wet weather. Still, as each year has passed here I have missed the 4 seasons more and more. I can't wait to get into that seasonal rhythm again next summer . . .