Rain

The earth had been dry for longer than I had cared to remember. After months of living in a dryer-machine like atmosphere one's brain becomes numb to the heat. Most especially during the peak hours from around ten o'clock to four o'clock. What would back home normally be considered the most productive hours of the day is reduced to a hazy, narcotic like heat trance forcing all ages outside under the nearest mango tree. It never ceases to amaze me what the human body can become acclimated to. And while heat is certainly acknowledged, accepted, and feared, in its ubiquity it is not even an issue but just a physical fact of nature, like gravity.
This was the scene for nearly four months throughout the long dry season. And this fact of life was mercifully broken for a short day by a righteous rain that changed my understanding of what I had always thought was just water from the sky.
Rain is a simple enough concept. Back home, every so often some water would fall from heaven and interrupt our outside activities. At best a nourishment for the yellowing lawn and at worse, and more frequently, a cessation of the enjoyment of the greater outdoors. In Benin not the case.
The big sky was already starting to look angry as I began the walk to school. I had wondered if the kids would show up during a rain storm, especially with the other teachers striking, but responsibility reared its ugly head and I was compelled to take the walk anyway, poncho in hand and binder in the other. Halfway there the slow pitter patter began to increase and I was obliged to suit up. By the primary school I pass on the way this pitter patter had become a downpour. Buckets upon buckets, falling and falling and falling. What I had always thought were dusty creases in the trail become flowing rivers and I imagined tiny towns being carried away in the current.
How different the scene now was as I looked around. The fogginess instilled in my minde by the long dry season's heat had seemed to be lifted and my eyes were new. The laughter came slowly, seemingly answering the pounding of the rain and by the time the poncho was off tears were in my eyes as I could hardly stand due to my cackling. It wasn't funny...Well, maybe a little. At least the thought of how ridiculous I looked in my poncho whilst walking to school. But the laughter was more caused by joy or reverence for the rain. I'm not a farmer, but almost everyone else is in Aklampa and I get my food from these farmers. No water, no food. But then again, the joy I was feeling in my soul wasn't just a, hooray I can eat!-feeling, it was something more primordial. A realization that for at least one more year, the sky hadn't forgotten us. Water fell, like it has always done, and though the dry season tried again to fool us into giving up hope, the heavens opened up and acknowledged us. Hope springs eternal, especially when the spring is the sky. I could hear the children pounding out beats on the desks before I rounded the corner to my classroom and at the sight of me approaching an uproarious shout was let out by the students and the beat stoutly held its line, trying to answer the gratifying noise of rain on tin. Dusty orange and red had already began to change to deep brown and green, signs of emerging life. The smiles on the children confirmed what I had thought on the walk to school. We are born again in Aklampa.