Feeling the Rain 17 March 2016

Hanging around during 6^th period this morning, I paused mid-conversation to listen. The tap tap on the tin roof wasn’t wind or birds. It was sprinkles of rain! Walking shortly after that with some of my boys from section C, we brushed off the drops and continued on, though we did notice the concrete was darker than normal. As I unlocked my door, the drizzle started to become steady. It’s been about 4 hours and the rain has just stopped with thunder finally silencing.

While rain is nothing worth mentioning in the Pacific Northwest right now (I’ve heard it snowed/hailed in Spokane this week), Ethiopia is halfway around the world and close to the equator. This is hot season--a time when temperatures in Tigray, the northernmost region of the country, reach to the 90-100’s for weeks on end. A time when water is monitored, sunscreen applied liberally and repeatedly, and cooking is the worst part of the day. A time when rooms heat up even during the night waking one up at 2 or 3 am dripping in a wet mask. A time when morning shift is prized as students’ attention fades as the heat increases in the concrete classrooms.

I was laughed at when I jumped out to feel the few big drops of rain at school. Students were concerned and asked if I had an umbrella. People gawked at me as I braved the wind, puddles, and torrents as I attempted to go to the post office. Little kids told me to put the hood back up on my raincoat so my hair wouldn’t be ruined, as it had come off while we twirled. I can’t help it: I love the rain.

Growing up in the foothills of the Cascades, I am used to it raining at least 9 months out of the year. I used to have to remind college buddies that there are different types of rain for me like there are different words for snow for an Eskimo. But today I was reminded of the vast importance of rain.

The heat is exhausting. Rain provides a cool pause to a busy schedule. It allows the body to relax and remember what it is like to not sweat for a while. It washes off the old sidewalk chalk, pushes away the dirt and dung from the roads, and rinses off everything else to start a new. It relieves kids from carrying water to the fields, and takes on responsibility for filling buckets on its own. As Ethiopians are afraid of catching sickness from it, the rain also makes us consider our own mortality or at least immune system.

As I was standing on my front step letting the rain splash my feet and dribble on my hands a quote from a song went through my head. “Feel the rain on your skin. No one else can feel it for you. Only you can let it in. Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten.” (“Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield ). No one else can feel the rain on your skin. No one can make you accept or deny it. But if today’s rainstorm is the start to a new book, page, leaf or even a footnote, the rain reminds me to start fresh with a passion. The dust has been washed away and forgotten. So has the past. The future cannot be expected, just like hours of rain during a drought. And the present is open for acceptance or denial, but either way it’s part of the story. A story that holds many unwritten pages to be filled, but with a page count unknown.

In the time it has taken me to type this, dry patches are starting to show on the compounds’ concrete like a giraffe’s skin. A cat is basking in a bright dry spot. The clouds have changed from elephant grey to milky white. Kids laughter and shouts are echoing on the wind. Time moves on. Rain keeps it all fresh. What’s important is to live through it all.

(Side note: The rain stopped long enough for me to get my evening walk in and then started up again taking out power. I feel asleep with the steady tap tap on the roof and the drips off downspouts.)