Equatorial Thrills

What does Bungoma, Kenya have in common with Quito, Ecuador and Singapore? They sit on the same latitude, roughly between 0 and 1 degrees in the Northern Hemisphere.

What’s life on the equator like? (and I mean almost literally on the equator- I leave my house in the northern hemisphere to fly out of the airport in the southern hemisphere).

Well there’s no sign of the big red stripe that’s so eye-catching on desk globes, but there are some harder to see anomalies going on. The rotation of water is a particularly cool one. You might know that water spins counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern (the Coriolis Effect), but this idea has always been sort of intangible to me. At the equator crossing in Western Uganda, they have a little roadside exhibit which makes it much more real.

Let me set the scene: there are 3 yellow basins with holes at the bottom, one each to the north and south, and one directly on the equator. They’re each about 5 feet apart. Together you start in the north. The guide pours a bucket of water into the basin, and then delicately places a recently plucked flower in the center. As the water drains, the flower sits on top spinning counterclockwise. Then he walks you a few feet across the equator and repeats this in the basin there. This time, the same flower whirls in the opposite direction. Finally, when he places the flower in the center of the 3^rd basin right on the line, it doesn’t move an inch. It sits perfectly placid until the water drains and it falls through the hole.

In hindsight, it seems obvious that I should’ve taken videos, but I was so enthralled with this little terrestrial miracle that I didn’t think of it. Equatorial thrills! Next post will include a decidedly more celestial equatorial phenomenon, which we contemplated heavily while staying in a rooftop room at a beautiful beach house on the Kenyan coast last week.