Rain
Today it rained. For the first time since I returned to Africa it rained, bringing cooling relief to a dry and dusty land. This is not my first time to stand on African soil and breath in the moist fragrance of wettened dust, and my mind jumped back to a time long ago when I had stood thus, entranced by the spell of rain in Africa.
I was here just seven months ago, but the memories that flood my mind do not come from that visit. They are from a time two years ago when I was living in the small town of Nanyuki on the slopes of Mt. Kenya.
Life was simple then, and the world seemed large, and rain was something that came six months of the year, bringing mosquitos, mud, and the dreaded safari ants. But rain was not all bad, for there was the sweet smell of cool, crisp mountain air; strawberries that blossomed profusely in the back yard, and the unique feeling of cold rain falling on my face, running down my neck and arms, and filling my rubber boots, making them comfortably heavy as I traipsed along a path by the river.
I loved rain then, loved to see the monstrous storm clouds build up over the majestic peaks of the mountain, then come billowing down across the plains, releasing their burden of moisture upon already-waterlogged soil. The smell of damp earth mingled with the fragrance of strange, exotic plants which seemed to emit their scent only when water laid heavy on their leaves. The myriad chirping and singing birds hopping from branch to branch high in the trees joined to assault the senses with such overwhelming stimulus that it was hard to take it all in at once. The rising mist from rain water returning to the clouds where it was born gave me the impression that I was walking in a tropical jungle.
It was hard then to remember the dry months when our water supply would give out for days on end, and we had to pump our bathing and drinking supply from a two thousand gallon reserve tank, up two stories, into the roof reservoir, by hand. At night, when the electricity would occasionally flicker, then plunge my room into eerie darkness, I could hear the rain beating down the roof, and it seemed to isolate me. In those moments, it was as if I were alone on the planet, as if this house on the side of a mountain was the only home I will ever know.
With an expanded awareness, I could take in the mountain and the town below, and maybe my old home in Eldoret, far across the highlands. But no further. That day was eternity, a blissful eternity of naiveté.
How different today is from that day long ago; today, with rain causing a flood of nostalgia and a vision of the ways that my world has expanded and changed.
I shed a few silent tears and am on my way.