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| Playing FOR the rain. |
This is a simple thing worth not to talk about. Wait a while. It is not a
miracle to see water dropping from the heaven more so in the Wet Highlands of
Western Kenya or in the Mount Kenya highlands where Zack Kinuthia comes from. Let us look at it with an increased cautious. Conscience. It is
more than we think. Life is a comedy to those who think...Anonymous.
For the three consecutive nights, save when the new
moon was illuminated by the crescent moon a day ago, it has been pouring as it
does at the coast- raining in the night or early morning. There are souls that gaze
at the gloom weather with feelings of happiness or sadness. Maybe solemn mood.
Writers and readers find the mood to be a motivation in their nuts works.
Remember Synethesia? One cognitive activity leading to another as the rain
drops calls me to think and write about them.
We often groan when the rain is too much…too much? We
like complaining about everything. We complain about ourselves, our sins, our
environment, our different personalities and so on. So we only extend our deep discontenting,
for a human heart cannot be satisfied by one thing for a long time, to the
nature. Aristotle wrote that ‘nature does nothing carelessly'. When you look and
see rain, when you walk and step in mud, when you sleep and hear it from the ceiling
less houses, know that nature is at work. Rejoice!
In my diary, I had missed rain. Not that I wished it
came and cooled down the increased dust on roads or increase water tables in
wells. I had missed moods and attitudes that come along when the sun is prevented
from shining on earth by dark nimbus clouds. It is in Ukambani that I promised
grandma that the day I will be there and it happens to rain, I will stand in
the rain to feel the taste of the drops on my flesh. Sunny days are hard days.
I had missed the cutting wet wind that flaps my face on the way. I had longed
for a day that though time moves, the outside world looks alike- as morning as evening.
Then the mind would settle in a book, indoors, listening to the talk of the
showers on the roof and the tap tap cries of the drops as they hit the ground.
Like a new born child. Tuned to Don Williams...reading about Don in Godfather!
Raining in Nairobi is not as raining in Nandi or Vihiga or Meru. There comes home in mind! Excuse me to figure it out. There is
something that comes to my mind which I will not express in its real
conception. Raining is preceded by strong East-West winds standing at Kiptuiya
Escarpment... When the wind blows in the vice-versa way, we know that there
would be little grass for the cows and maize would take a little longer before
maturing.
East-West wind caused the trees to sway, leaves to
drop and the home field to be cleaned every morning. It broke weak branches and
fell down trees that had germinated on a long-cut tree. Some people think that
there is hope in a fallen tree that will again germinate. What a lose! Doors
banged and weak thatches flew. The moving wind rose and fell, sometime collecting
rubbish and nylon papers, running through the riversides as it made the tree
tops to bow, more often buzzing near and fading away until another near cycle. The whirl of Prophet
Elijah in its small magnitude seen in its coiling up. A friend said that that
led to a direct link with some kind of clouds formation up in the atmosphere.
Geography dropped I. Mother said that if you closed the center point in a
plastic basin, you would collect a snake after its relaxing. She was right
though I never witnessed.
The wind scatters any small cloud gatherings in the
sky as the sun dries them up to maintain a clear blue sky. My favourite colour. The sun
increases its intensity to make any water vessel thirsty. Its radius reduced,
intense light causes nausea at one second stare. As if nature works
against itself, the strong rays relax and the wind cools. Clouds rush to the
East and darkened after every minute. The end of the beginning awaits.
Looking at the clouds and listening to the thunder
before seeing the electric flash depending on your understanding whether sound
travels faster than light or what is taught in school, one can discern deeper
meanings. A child can be told that the metallic drums sound of the thunder is
but God’s belongings, ready to pour water down. Then He urinates. Holy water from
above full of purity. Industries polluted it.
Water is a phenomenon in itself. The cycle that ensures
the evaporated water falls back, its universal solvent characteristic, its 75%
of all living things and earth, its boiling point of 100 degrees Celsius at the
sea level, its anomalous expansion, its ability to keep long time memories, the
distinct different shapes and forms in its ice crystals and drops under high
magnification, the Biblical view that everything came from water, among all
other ideas that scientists have and will think about are only a small fraction
of this golden need of life. I ceased to take water for granted.
In the increased activity of taking clothes from the
hedges, gathering the hens and the chicks, taking firewood from outside and
slicing an axe in the soil to prevent a storm, children use the opportunity to
sing in rotation and fall on ground…the song never reaching an end.
Vwongoi… vwa mama AS Confusions….of mom
Vwongoi…vwa baba I Confusions…..of
dad
Vwongoi….vwa senge TRANSLATE Confusions…..of aunt
Vwongoi…vwa koza Confusions…..of
uncle
Vwongoi....vwa ..... Confusions.......of ......
The final
wind strongly blows and iron sheets clutter. Late doers assemble young lambs
and calves to the secured zips realizing that the rainbow could not mediate.
The otherwise weakened branches voluntarily break and weak trees uprooted. More
wind blows but this time heavy with water. No umbrella can sustain it. You
cannot walk against it. Vehicles stop at their positions. Children get
terrified. Every elder person stands alert in case of emergency. The drops fall
in large and small sizes, solid and liquid. The unending water terribly falls.
This is the time that iron-sheets are found to have had leakage spaces.
Thatched roofs are discovered to be in need of replacement. It is not only under
the doors that ice rain resigns. It settles on the banana tree back that was hurriedly made to collect water. The river would be filled for two days and no
clean water will be scooped. And still it’s not a storm! Just rain…
When the drops secede after the last horrible
threatening flash and grounding thunder that shakes the earth, all know that
the tap for the day is being twisted back. Farmers are happy and in their minds
they can see the pluming bursting big to in germinating. A new life has been
pumped into the farms that irrigation could not provide. Green is the colour. Weeding days are
mentally noted because of all weed species, volatile and chronic that only
needs a new ecology to live. Children run to collect the reduced-in-size ice. They
store in metallic cups as some go directly to the mouth. Those who love to play
in the water find pleasure to do it with some artfully at an angle that a
football player can hardly master. The splash gets an opponent square in the face
and on clothes. It is showering time! A run on the grass field and in easiness
letting your legs slide of the wet grass as the body joins after a two-metre
pilot mode follows. It is their ocean. Last showers subside.
The hens run after insects displaced by the rain.
Termitoidaes fill the air and birds chirp as they gulp them in mid-air.
Children collect them in moist containers. What a meal when they are perfectly
dried? Squirrels whose holes had been filled by the running water get out
slowly. They cannot run. The dogs mercifully pounce on them. The mother earth
is sprayed with a natural perfume of wet loamy soil. Women come out to deeply
sniff in the fragrance as they yearn for a clod richindi. Men pretend not to feel the aroma. It is not masculine to be simply sensitive.
In the shiver, as the scramble for the fireplace
commences, the active children lower their lower lips trembling. Teeth clatter
in resonance to the glowing charcoal of cooking woods. The bold resemble
chicks. Mothers are ready to tell stories of the past good days and a brighter
future of obedient children. They know their work tomorrow. It is tomorrow that
the trees will have willingly dropped dried branches. There will be least
climbing of trees for firewood. Maybe to shake them for the hanging ones to drop down. Water
tasks are kept at bay. Enough water was harvested until the overflowing Izava settles. With it, will be firewood
on its banks. Nature at work.
Crickets
replace the rain and frogs immediately join the rather calm night. It is
noisy again! And more quiet alike! A keen listener can hear the ground swallowing water.
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