Am that kind of person who whenever I go visiting long lost relatives, they always exclaim: ” Hata tujakuwa na mvua, umetuletea baraka!” Blessings or not, rain always seems to stalk me. Be it important or not so important, solemn or festive life events, it almost always get washed out. Here is the story of my good friend the rain and I; and the explanation from Bukusu culture that my grandmother recently offered after another washed out visit in the high of dry November.
Let me let you in on a secret. Since I realized myselefu, rain has been my bosom buddy. It’s a friendship borne out of circumstances of forced comradeship. This is because I cannot remember a day I have undertaken a life changing event without rain. Efula as we call the rain in Bukusu, has troubled my existence. Whenever I plan anything, the rain without giving me a heads up, plans its arrival too. In fact when I make a left step, the rain makes the right step. When I negotiate a corner, the rain negotiates the corner.
Raining cats and dogs on my graduation… smack in the dry season! *@!!!
I graduated from university one August, which as many know, is right at the heart of the mid-year short dry season in Western Kenya. But the rain care little, its good friend was graduating and it couldn’t miss such an auspicious occasion for anything. And so it rained cats and dogs.
The road leading up to our home in the village was impassable. All vehicles arriving at our home were all covered in mud after being pushed through the slug by villagers. Even the 4WD vehicles barely managed to make it home for the graduation luncheon. As my guests streamed in all muddied up, you’d think guys had turned up for a rhino charge event.
Worse, the good suit that my proud father had bought for the day was no good no more. He had to tuck his trousers into his socks and you all know how off putting that look is. Then there was the matter of my graduation gown which being a little too big for my slight frame swept through the mud. Let me not even get started with my stilettos…
My Wafula who thanks to the rain almost became a Wangila
When I checked myself in hospital to have my baby, rains accompanied me all through. Just like there had been no warning of rains coming – no heavy clouds assembled or as we say in Lubukusu efula khuyita – one afternoon, I found myself in active labor.
My husband and I were apprehensive of the perilous journey ahead as we lived quite a distance from hospital and the roads were bad. Yet, to add to our worries, the rains out of nowhere started coming down. Once again, the rain’s good friend was about to bring forth new life to the world; how would the rain miss out on that? I mean, what are friends for?
Scampering under an umbrella, we got into the car and sped off to hospital. Just so that you know how ready to bear down I was, my water broke on our way to hospital. On arrival at the hospital, the chaos of the rain had it that we found ambulances and other vehicles blocking the entrance. This forced us to leave our car some 100m from the entrance. Meanwhile the rains were pounding outside.
Almost Wangila
I could not wait in the car because I feared dropping the baby in the car. If that had happened, the Bukusu way of naming children would have it named Wangila (boy) or Nangila (girl). With the pace of a heavily pregnant woman about to bear down I walked towards the hospital reception. My good friend the rain was with me through out the ten or so steps I made before a hospital orderly spotted us and rushed over with a wheelchair.
Knowing how close I was, my husband powered the wheelchair towards the hospital’s labor ward caring little for things like umbrellas. By the time I covered the 100 meters distance, I could feel the close presence of my good friend efula: my clothes were soaked.
I climbed the delivery coach all messed up. The first thing the delivery room nurse did was to wipe mud off my feet from the splatter of rain drops. Then she give me a hospital gown and something warm to cover me up. As the pains of labor came, I distracted myself with the sound of rain pounding on the roof. The patter made by my good friend efula seemed to say “Everything will be alright.” The baby came in the rain. We named him Wafula, meaning the boy of the rain.
The curious case of the hobby farmer who hates the rain
A regular reader here knows that I am a hobby farmer. A proud Bukusu girl I am who even though farms for the fun of it nonetheless lives to the ethos of the Bukusu saying: Embako sebea ta! Meaning, the jembe does not lie. Moreover, I get some income from the farm so I’m lucky to get paid doing what I love. But as I chronicled in this post on the tribulations of the Bukusu small scale farmer, I don’t entirely rely on the farm.
So this one time I had cultivated corn. The maize crop did so well. I remember walking around the farm feeling all proud of myself. Good times! My favorite pastime became walking about the farm estimating the number of bags I would harvest.
When harvesting time came, as I prepared the workforce to begin working on the fields, clouds gathered. In Lubukusu, we term such overcast day khufunyela. So I postponed the work for a day, planning to work on the third day. When busiayo (the day after tomorrow) came, the rains still held pregnant clouds over the fields. But still, no rains. I postponed the work for a week. Over the week, heavy dark clouds kept hovering in the skies bringing forth a lot of wind and few droplets.
Rain rain go away, come again another day
The more I postponed the work, the more the rains refused to fall. And the more they seemed unlikely. This game of hide and seek between my good friend efula and I went on for a fortnight. Clouds would gather every morning, disperse and let the sun shine for 20 mins then they would cover the sun again for 2hrs. Like that, we played cat and mouse games with the rain.
I got tired of the games and set out to begin harvesting maize. That Nyongesa (Saturday), we did our work so well. So smooth it was that having set out at dawn, we had made sure the real work was completed by 11:00am. The remaining part of the day was meant for transporting the harvest, sorting and storage.
All was well until around 2:00 pm. The heavy clouds gathered as had been the case for the past week. The transport team was doing their bit. Then we started getting rain drops. An old hand in the farm convinced me that I wouldn’t pour and that the raindrops we felt had blown our way from rains yonder up Mt. Masaba. “Eyita ebiranga,” he said.
Pools and streams
We kept working but this was not for long. Half the harvest had been offloaded at the entrance of the store in preparation for sorting and storage. The other half was parked in bags on the farm. Since the farm is positioned in a slanting fashion one is able to see pretty much of what is on the lower side when standing on the far end of the upper portion of the farm.
This particular day the gunny bags looked like cherry fruits on a branch. They were parked and spaced in three, fours and five bags depending on the farm hand’s ability. We had harvested approximately 200 bags of maize on this day.
Then the rains started pounding. It rained! It beat hard! The rains beat! It pounded. Rained again. It rained I tell you! And rained some more. Finally, the heavens got tired and stopped. After the rains, the farm was all soaked. All the maize that had been offloaded at the entrance of the store was water.
You know these farms with red soils? Yes, those ones. That is the kind of farm we own. So, our maize at the store crop soaked in runoff water turned red.
Harvest washed away
Small streams of runoff water could be seen viciously flowing through the farm. There was so much water that pools would form around the bags of maize still in the fields. With these conditions, the transporter could not continue working because he feared his truck could get stuck in the farm.
The following day we decided not to continue with harvesting. We took time to transport all the previous day’s harvest home and dry it before storing it. But my good friend efula had not done with ‘helping’ me so the rains came back early on day two. To cut the long story short, we lost that year’s maize crop to the rain.
I was devastated! Heartbroken. Disappointed in myself for not being able to read the weather. I beat myself up. Then cried myself to sleep. Nakhatama my grandmother happened to pass by a week after the rains. She found us still running to keep the maize from the rains.
Nakhatama had heard about what had happened and had come ‘to see for herself’. But instead of the empathy I expected, she broke into a long laughter as I recounted my misfortune. In what appeared as pure wonder, she expressed that she was at loss why I was angry at myself.
Finally, with some empathy to my deep sense of loss, she interpreted the mystery of the rain to me.
“Nobona efula ekhulondakho aba oli ne libuba,” she said. Translated: “If you see the rain following you all over you are a jealous person.”
Over to you folks. For those of you who have been wondering why they get rained on left right and center, check on your green eye. Cut with the being jealous…. hahaha!
