Rainy Days and Sundays

A rainy Sunday in Kampala gives you the perfect excuse to curl up in bed and do nothing. This morning, I had planned to get up early to go for a long run, in preparation for the half-marathon in a couple of weeks. As soon as I woke up, I heard the patter of rain and peered through the window to see grey skies and the rain bouncing off the ground. A series of phone calls and texts followed, weighing up the options – should we wait a while, should we go to the gym, should we run on the paved roads? We really ought to be running 18km today, and had hoped to attempt one of my old biking routes through small villages and past the Baha’i Temple. But these are dirt roads, and when it rains, dirt roads turn into mud roads, as slippery and treacherous as black ice in an English winter. When it rains, the potholes turn into crater lakes of unknown depths. In the end, we all decided to do nothing. To crawl back into bed and enjoy the sensation of being wrapped in a duvet while the temperatures dropped to a cool 20 degrees or so. It’s the perfect time to catch up on reading, movies and blogs. When it rains I take the time to cook for the week, or, on rare occasions, I even bake a carrot cake. In all honesty, it is the only time when I actually stop and relax, so for that, I am grateful for the rain!