Soil

This past summer I went to Burkina Faso, in Western Africa for a military mission. Upon getting to my destination I noticed that the ground was not like the ground here in the United States. I noticed that it was red in color and had the characteristics as clay. I went there during the rainy season of Africa and it would vigorously rain for about 30-45 minutes, and then stop for the rest of the day. However, the few days it would rain for hours, the dirt on the ground would become clay like and would prevent the water from being absorbed into the ground. This would create these rivers that would flood the streets. There were also very minimal trees and crops which grew from this red dirt. This brought me to the question on why? Why is it red? Perhaps it was the lack of nutrients that the ground had. I became interested in this and began to research and learned that the ground is infact clay and is rich in iron and aluminum due to the heavy rains and intense heat. the red color comes from the oxidation of the iron in the soil.