Snow

I am trying to figure out how to describe snow to someone who has lived in Africa all his life. Jacob is a friend who lives in the west African nation of Ghana...

Jacob is a pastor and evangelist who travels to many villages, and even to the local prison to preach the gospel. Several years ago his church was burned to the ground, and he suspects hostile Muslims. Fortunately he and his wife and children escaped injury.

I have been corresponding with Jacob for at least fifteen years. Friends of ours from the state of New Jersey routinely ship boxes of Bibles to him. Now, with lots of snow piled outside my window, I want to convey to him what snow is like. Jacob has only seen it in books, magazines, and in the movies. But he has never felt it on his skin.

So I suppose I should tell him that snow is like wet baby powder that falls from the sky. That it has no taste. And when it lands on a person's skin it feels cold, and if the wind is blowing hard, it stings your face like little needles. It makes you squint your eyelids, too.

Then I will tell him how quiet it gets outside when the streets and fields become blanketed with fresh snow. How it muffles many sounds. Next, how at some point it will start to melt when the temperature rises, and that it becomes water which eventually seeps into the ground or evaporates leaving no trace of its presence.

For Jacob, having known only the unrelenting heat and humidity of Africa along with a skin-baking unmerciful sun, snow is a mysterious substance.

D.B.