Beautiful rain.

Beautiful rain
Oh, come, never come
Oh, come, never come
Oh, come to me beautiful rain

~ Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Saturday afternoon. The air is steaming as the temperature climbs. My clothes and hair cling to me in the humidity and I know that my dripping hand washing will not be long on the line. We are in the heart of the rainy season, yet the rains just do not come, the temperature instead soaring higher each day, like the birds that circle in the sky, rising steadily on thermals.  The ground is parched and hard and the thick red dust clings to my feet as I walk through my village.

But today everyone senses the rain is coming.

I asked my colleagues whether they prefer the wet or dry season. The thick slippery mud that comes with the rains, or the fine dust that clings in the dry season? Both the mud and the dust make travel to rural villages a challenge. We need the rains they replied. Or the crops won’t grow.

Within this wet season, the rains have been alarmingly scarce. We have had frequent water-shortages, sometimes for up to 2 weeks, and it is not uncommon to see students wandering the village with buckets and jerrycans in search of a water supply. Fill your buckets while you can – because you never know how long until you can replenish your supplies!

Every day, the beating sun has scorched the air to such an extent that my tin roof flexes and creaks, the dry mud walls are too hot even for the armoured spiders to stay in their dark cracks.  And when we have been lucky enough to have a short rainfall I sometimes love to stand until I am drenched and my hair and clothes are cool and soaking and clinging to me, hanging heavy with water.

Now it has been 6 weeks. There have been a couple of cool drizzly mornings where the hills and lake have been lost – hidden in mist. A few heavy downpours mid-afternoon - soaking me, despite my umbrella, and sending the entire village running for shelter - have passed so quickly that by home time the road has already dried and again become hard and ridged and dusty. Once again leaves have turned crisp, beans parched and yellow, the pods dehydrated and withered.

But today there is the scent of rain in the air. Like battleships above me, low storm clouds roll slowly in – the heavy weights of the sky. My neighbours glance upwards, anticipating how long until the sky breaks. They move quickly, washing pans, glancing up, storing firewood, glancing up, moving utensils indoors, closing windows, glancing again at the sky. And as dark wet circles appear on the ground, we grab the washing from the line, throwing it over our shoulders, and dash quickly indoors.

As I pull the door closed behind me, lightning strikes so close that the small space between my house and my neighbours’ is filled with intense, blinding white light. I turn away from the window so as not to see the next lightning strike. Our village is on the top of the hill and it always seems as though thunderstorms unleash their full intensity on the tiny tin roofs of the small rural community here. In the last rainy season, it unsettled me to hear my neighbours describe how scared they had been of a particularly furious thunderstorm. For now the storm is immediately above us and I too feel frightened.

Drilling onto my tin roof, the rain rapidly becomes heavier, until the sound has become deafening, like white-noise that fills my head and my house. The volume notches up, higher and higher. And then it just stops. Like suspense building in a thriller. The sky holds its breath. I find the dramas of nature awesome and fascinating, but the storms here are really terrifying and beyond anything I have experienced.

An almighty thunder crash explodes, deafeningly close, and I can feel the impact of the electrical explosion in the sky above me. With the thunder, immediately there is torrential rainfall, once again pounding my roof, like hooves, as if we have been caught in a migration stampede.

Buckets and basins placed on the ground outside beneath the ends of gutters fill quickly and overflow. Paths have become rivers, splashing and gushing. Dark patches spread slowly down my wall, as water seeps in around my window frames. I check that all my electrical appliances are unplugged, unsure of what to next. In schools, lessons simply stop when the rains come as it is impossible to think, let alone hold a conversation above the drumming rainfall.

There is nothing more I can do and I am glad to climb into bed, beneath my duvet, until the storm passes. Many of my friends here in Rwanda do the same I know. A good friend was telling me that the biggest storms are followed by the deepest sleep.

I wonder whether the rains today will be enough to save the crops that my colleagues mentioned before.

 I hear the drums echoing tonight

But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She's coming in the 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say
"Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you!"
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

 

~ TOTO, AFRICA