EVOLVE
The Cicada Rains
Spring here means the sunlight of the dry season, the humidity of the rainy season, and huge cicadas
Just when you think the dry season can’t possibly get any hotter, or any sunnier, or any drier, strong winds start to blow through, bringing pollen and dust and smoke from far-away controlled burns of sugarcane fields. Some days the wind is so strong and the pollution so thick, my sinuses throb with each gust. I want to sit outside and enjoy the last few days of sunshine but the wind drives me inside. My throat is parched, the top layer of my skin looks like tissue paper, my eyes itch, then burn, and I find myself lying in bed by 8 o’clock every night because it’s too uncomfortable to keep my eyes open.
But one day you’ll notice the wind blowing slightly cooler. You’ll see clouds in the sky, in the distance. The air will feel heavy and more humid, despite the brilliant sunlight shining down.
And then, out of no where, it will start raining.
Some time in March, before the official end of the dry season, before Santa Semana starts, there are surprise rain storms known as la lluvia de chicharras (or cigarras), the cicada rains.
The blinding sunshine and the hot, dry winds will not be gone for good yet. But they will be accompanied by the singing and humming of cicadas.
Yesterday I thought a bird had crashed into one of the plants in my garden but then I realized the crash was preceded by a buzzing sound and birds don’t buzz. I shrugged it off as one of those unexplainable nature things. Shortly after, my husband came home from a dog walk and said the dog found his first cicada of the year and it clicked that a cicada is what must have crashed in the garden, too. For some reason I felt like marking the occasion of the first cicada, so here I am.
It rained last night and the day before. Today we have dry wind and the smell of far-away smoke, and the sound of cicadas buzzing in the garden, in the street, all around.
You can experience a major cicada season in the U.S. Northeast and think you’ve heard and seen the best cicada show, and you will be wrong. The cicadas here are almost as long as my hand. I often mistake them for drunk hummingbirds crashing along the edge of the porch. I heard a tornado siren, then remembered we don’t have tornados here. It was a cicada.
I’ve never been bothered by the sight or sound of cicadas. In the United States, to me, they become a backdrop to a hot, humid summer. But in El Salvador they are a harbinger of the change of season. We don’t have much of a spring here, moving from dry season to rainy season. But we do have a couple transition weeks, and those weeks are the time of the cicadas.
I am by no means an expert on El Salvador; I moved here from Rhode Island not quite two years ago. This is based on my personal experience and observations, chatting with a Salvadoran friend, and this blog post I found while researching.
Another world traveler:
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