With the description of drought and very hot sun in those first months of the year, you might be tempted to think Nyandarua finally warmed up. Not for the night, it didn’t. The high temperatures stayed constant until the sun started going down.
As the skyline turned into a beautiful orange glow, the temperatures started dipping steadily. By the time darkness started to fall, bone chilling cold set in for the night, freezing everything until dawn when we woke up to frost (mbaa) covering the ground and the dried up vegetation.
No matter how hot it got in the daytime, Nyandarua natives knew not to leave their sweaters, coats and scarfs at home. They knew from experience that if the sun started setting while they were still far from home, they would be freezing cold by the time they reached home.
During those dry months when Nyandarua looked bare and barren, it was almost uncomfortable to receive first time visitors from Nairobi or Gikuyu where it remains relatively green almost throughout the year. Anytime we had visitors during those months, I remember my parents explaining at length that it was ‘not always this bad’. They urged the visitors to come back in a few months when it was nice and green.
