Rain.

*This is the longest story I’ve put on my newsletter so far. I wrote it for a job I had a year ago with children in mind. I think it’s good writing and you will too. I’ve been having difficulty talking about my feelings and that’s why for three weeks in a row now you’ve gotten stories and not opinion pieces. I’ll get back to telling you what I think and feel about things as soon as I’m able to. For now, enjoy.*

There’s nothing more refreshing than the feeling of rain on your back and face. The pitter-patter of the water making its descent down your body and settling in puddles around your feet. I loved rainy days, ditching the shade to run freely under the rain. I loved the steady rhythm of the water drumming on my body. When I happened to be under shade, I’d look up and the motion of the water would give me the surreal feeling of being under the rain, observing but not being touched by it. I’d watch the drops with fascination, trying to catch them in my hands. I loved it so much that at the slightest indication that rain would fall I’d wait outside until I greeted the first drops as they greeted me. 

One day the rain betrayed me though. I had gone out in typical fashion to enjoy the rain and as I reveled in the cascading droplets of water, I slipped, fell and hit my head. 

When I woke up I was in our house, my mother hovering above me, massaging my temples with a hot cloth. I had a terrible headache and my knees and elbows were bruised. My mother was livid. “I forbid you from going out in the rain from henceforth! If you must go out in the rain, you will wear rain boots and a coat or carry an umbrella.” I was devastated.  I could not imagine watching the rain fall from inside a house or being under the rain but not being able to feel it because of an umbrella. I begged and begged my mother and I promised that I would be more careful next time. There would be no next time though. 

It was the rainy season and so it rained every other day. I could not leave the house to play with the other children under the rain until my bruises healed and when my mother finally let me out, I had to wear rain boots and carry an umbrella. It was not the same. I was no longer one with the water and the wind. The trees swayed, reveling in the glory of the rain and I could not sway with them. 

Soon I outgrew the rain and forgot about the pleasure it once brought me. As I grew older, it became a necessary evil and a nuisance when it came while I was going somewhere or had things to do and a pleasant reprieve at night to chase the heat away. 

I had just turned sixteen and attained a new level of autonomy and maturity. I was no longer fascinated by the rain. Sometimes, I didn't even notice it. Some things did not change though. We still celebrated the beginning of the rainy season in our village, thanking the gods for the water that would give us a good harvest. When the first rain fell, everyone would go out under the rain, believing that being touched by those first drops would bring blessings. When I was a child I hated this. It felt like a bunch of imposters were taking advantage of the rain. They would dance and sing under the rain on that day but call it a nuisance when it continued to fall after the harvest was done. After I was forbidden from going out under the rain, I was only permitted to be under the rain without protection on days when we were celebrating the new season. I looked forward to it then, running out under the first rain with excitement, eager to greet an old friend. My excitement waned as the years passed though and that day, as the skies darkened and the rain began to trickle out of the sky and down our roof, I told my mother I would not be going under the rain to dance in celebration. What was there to celebrate? Rain comes and rain goes. Why the ceremony? She’d scolded me but when she realized my resolve was firm, she left me to stay inside, saying I’d miss out on the blessings if I did not come out. 

That season, it rained ceaselessly. The skies cried day in and day out. There were whole weeks where the rain did not stop falling once. After about a month of the rain, the people of the village were worried. There had been times when the rain fell aggressively but never like this. We’d had seasons in the past where the rain was heavy and destructive, felling trees and pulling the roofs off houses but this time, the rain was violent as well as incessant. The mud roads were washed away as though they never existed, trees littered the roads and those that were still standing had lost several branches and leaves. The people consoled themselves by thinking the rain would fall hard and fast and stop falling before time for the harvest but at least, the farms would yield good crops because of the large amount of rain that fell in the first weeks. We all thought it would be over soon and we were wrong. 

What we considered a blessing soon became a curse. The crops that we were certain would blossom as a result of the rain were washed away by the water. The soil was eroded and the clay with which we built our homes started to melt, unable to withstand the rain. Our neighbor’s tin roof gave up one day and was blown away and they had to move away to stay with family members. The move was laborious. The water was up to their knees as they trudged diligently to the other side of the village where their family lived. Our electricity went out long ago, after the first week of the rain. The new masts that had been erected in our village a few years ago had also fallen as a result of the rain. As they were buried underwater, so were our hopes of the quick modernization of our village. 

Some houses stood firm. The concrete contraptions of the affluent, those who had been able to make the switch from clay houses to cement. Some years ago the government of our state had come to our quaint village and blessed us with electricity and everything began to change with it. Trade also began to boom and we gained access to things we could never have imagined we would have access to. We even had a telephone at the village head office, available for use to villagers, though at a steep price. We were on the fast track to progress and the rain had halted it. 

The skies were angry. Black clouds were all we knew in those weeks, the sun had disappeared on what we hoped was a temporary hiatus. Farmers had lost their crop, the traders who came from other villages to sell had packed up their goods and returned to their villages in the second week, when the water was just as high as our ankles and our electricity was gone. The progress that had accumulated over the years was wiped away in about a month. The gods were angry and we did not know our offence. 

The elders called an emergency village meeting, dispatching a few young men to make the rounds, knocking on everyone’s doors and summoning one member per household to a mandatory meeting. The men who came to call people carried umbrellas that did not work, turned inside out by the wind. They wore boots too, hoping that the firm grip of the soles of their shoes would keep them from being washed away, feeling around in the murky water for solid ground so as not to fall in a pit or a hole created by the rain. They brought a boat too. It had gotten that bad. The water was as high as my waist as I attempted to leave the house without letting more water than necessary in, to represent my mother at the meeting. I got in the boat with some of my neighbors and we went to other neighborhoods summoning people to the meeting to proffer a solution to our problem. 

When we got to the areas with the cement houses, the inhabitants were reluctant to join our cause. They said the rain would stop eventually and that they were unbothered by it because they lived in big and strong cement houses with walls of concrete that would not cave. They said the only problem they faced was the lack of electricity but the rain cooled their houses and so they would be okay. They dismissed us haughtily. We were beneath them and our problems were not their problems. Soon, we got to the town hall. The elders were waiting there having been conveyed earlier by boat. 

“What will we do about this problem?” They asked. I was glad to be in their midst. I was the youngest person in the meeting, having had to go to represent my family since my father had died just before I was born. I had a seat at the adult table and though the circumstances that led me here were bleak, I was glad. One of the elders declared that we had offended the gods with our quest for modernization. He was the leader of a faction that opposed the advancement of our village and fought the state government for “afflicting” us with electricity. It was no secret that he clinged to the old ways and disapproved of anyone who embraced what we deemed as progress. “If we had just left things as they were and been content in our farming and hunting and trading among ourselves, we would not be in this predicament. Instead, we allowed them to erect masts high as the heavens, contesting for space with our gods. We let them bring their unholy commodities into the village for sale, taking them to our sacred places. We tore down our houses of clay that had served us since the times of our fathers and their fathers before them. We let our gods die.  In fact, we killed them. It is no surprise that they are angry and are now retaliating.”

A second elder who was famously known for having wholeheartedly ushered in the modernization having built a cement house himself stood up to speak. “What this man has just said are nothing but the ramblings of an old man who has become too familiar with stagnation that he welcomes mediocrity, believing that better does not exist and if it does, it must be evil. Our gods are content. We take the first of our harvests to them and we celebrate their special days. We have even gone further by decorating their shrines and making them sturdy and secure by lacing their walls with cement. The shrine of the river goddess and the other ones we were allowed to fortify stand secure while others have fallen. If you and the other hard headed villagers who are enamored with regression had allowed us to do the same for all the shrines, especially the shrine of the rain goddess, they would still be standing today and this punishing rain would have ceased or never even began. Trade has also helped this village develop. Do we not all like electricity and our new fans cooling our homes in the heat of the dry season? If the rain is the punishment of the gods, it is because you failed to allow those of us who are wise enough to see the need for growth to extend said growth to them.” 

The room was divided in two. Those who agreed with the first speaker and those who agreed with the second. I was torn. My neighbor nudged me and asked what I thought of the whole thing and I had to take a moment to think about it. Modernization had done wonders for our village. We went from using large banana leaves to protect ourselves from the rain to using large umbrellas and boots and coats. We went from using palm fronds to fan ourselves when the weather got too hot to using standing fans, automatically whirring away and providing coolness non-stop as long as there was electricity. Farming got easier too. The particularly successful farmers were able to replace their cutlasses with electrical grass cutters. The advancement of trade was also a blessing to the village and villagers. Before, we only had access to what we could locally produce or what the traders got from neighboring towns. It was as though we were cut off from the rest of the state. However, with the introduction of electricity to our village it was as though we were formally inducted into modern society and trade blossomed. People from far and wide came and sold to us and we also went to other villages and sold to them. Plans were in the works to tar our major roads before the rains came.  I did not know much about the gods. I knew we prayed to the river and the moon and the sun and we thanked the rain. I knew they all had shrines erected at different parts of the village. My mother was a devout worshipper of the river and moon goddesses, going to their shrines once a week. I was never particularly interested or involved in worship of any of our gods. I was of the belief that they existed on their own before I was born and would continue to exist when I’m long gone and so my presence at their shrine would do nothing to alter their course or enrich their cause. I did agree with the first speaker that too much had changed in a very short period of time and those changes had disadvantages. The village was full of foreign strangers who brought various vices with them. Those who had been able to afford television sets were lost in them, forgetting the things they did before they had them. My mother  always complained about how the shrines were no longer full on days of worship and offerings were lean. Truly, we had neglected our gods. 

I said nothing in response to my neighbor. 

After both speeches, pandemonium had erupted in the room and it had still not ceased. Both sides of the argument were as relentless as the rain. Another elder who was revered and probably older than the others stood up to speak and immediately, silence and stillness descended upon the room. He said that truly, a lot had changed in the village and that change was not always definitively good or bad. He said that there was no indication that the rain was a form of punishment from any of our gods. “The weather has been changing, you see, the days get hotter and the rains heavier each year.” The elder who was anti-modernization exclaimed that this was because of all the changes. The neutral elder ignored him and continued to speak. “Truly, as a people, we are not as committed to our gods as we used to be. It is as though we have begun to outgrow them. Both ends of the coin are of value and so both arguments for and against modernization are with reasonable basis. But how do we know that this bout of rain is not just that, a bout of rain. What’s the indication that our gods are punishing us? It may be safe to assume that they are but we can not say without doubt that that is the problem. Should we desire to seek recourse and to appease them, how would we do that ? The shrine of the goddess of rain was washed away in the second week of the rains. Let us leave our gods to be gods, revering them once more in our hearts so that they know we are sorry for neglecting them.  They sense our intentions and if truly this is our punishment, they will see that and grant us succor. While we do this we can not simply sit and fold our hands waiting to be washed away by the rain. We must take proactive action.” The pro-modernization elder had donated some cement left over from the construction of his home. They would load it on the boat we had come on after sharing it and we would all take some home to lace our walls with the cement after mixing it with water. This would make our homes more sturdy. Also, the food in the village storehouse would be piled onto the boat. We would all get some to sustain us for a while longer. 

We went back to our homes and patched our walls and waited. The rain continued to fall with impunity. The wind intensified too and though I could not go out and see the extent of the damage, I knew it would be ghastly. After another week of punishing rain, we woke up to see the sun peek through the rain clouds and we knew it would all be over soon. The rain continued to fall albeit with less intensity for a while until it stopped altogether. 

The sun that shone after the rain was just as intense as the rain before it but we were thankful for it. The water began to dry. Soon we could come out again without having to wade in muddy water.

The first day I went out again I heard from my neighbors that huge trees had fallen and had destroyed the cement houses closest to them. The houses of those who had refused to join us in our cause. The inhabitants of those houses had to seek solace with their neighbours who lived in mud houses like ours. 

After a few weeks of no rain, we met again in the town hall. We were thankful for the sun and we had begun to rebuild our places of worship, this time with cement. The cement we had laced our walls with had saved us from the wind. As the wind chipped away at the mud on the outside, the cement on the insides held firm.  We had been sober and had prayed to our gods in reverence and they had prevented the falling trees from destroying our homes as they had destroyed the homes of those who regarded the meeting for an intervention with scorn. They were remorseful too and had attended the meeting this time. The neutral elder once again stood before us, telling us that the rain had done what nothing else could. It had brought about symbiosis between those who were averse to modernization and those who embraced it. We had taken proactive action and we had prayed. And while we did both, hand in hand, we had been protected from the rain and then spared from its wrath. 

A year passed by without event. We continued to worship our gods while we rebuilt our village. The masts were fixed and soon, most houses were coated with cement if not fully built with it. The harvest was poor that year but trade intensified and so there was food. Soon when the effects of the rain on the soil had worn off, we planted again and had a bountiful harvest. Things were even better than they’d been before the rain came. 

Soon, the skies darkened for the first time in the year and the clouds began to sag, heavy with water. My mother did not need to tell me to go outside to partake in the festivities. I went out with pleasure and for the first time since I was a child, I felt the pitter-patter of rain on my face and was filled with glee. The rain beat against me with that familiar steady rhythm I loved. We were one again and though I may not go out under every bout of rainfall, I would always find joy in rain, the joy I had once lost had returned. 

That season, whenever it rained, I would put off the television and look out of the window of our house, admiring this formidable force until the skies were no longer dark and the sun shone again.