RAIN

As the rain pounds down onto the roof above me and I pull me blanket up over my shoulder, I take in a breath of cool damp air and remind myself how lucky I am. Eleven times zones away, back in Seattle, rain means something very different to me. Seattle rain is constant, enriching and relentless. It creates the beautiful environment of the Pacific Northwest. It shapes the land and determines how, when and where we can access that land. It decides what we wear. It keeps things fresh and green. It cleans, it calms and it is just always there. Rain is a part of life in Seattle. Growing up in the Northwest rain meant recess indoors and damp socks sloshing in my shoes. Walking briskly through soft mist wrapped in a raincoat with hot coffee in my hand are parts of home that I miss. The start of the rainy season in Dar es Salaam brings me back to those memories, habits and cold, wet comforts.

                                                                                                                           

In the early hours of a Monday morning thunder, lightning and sheets of rain creep over the unsuspecting district of Dar in which I live. Here, the rains are less welcomed and despised by those dwelling. This morning the lightning flashes through a greyish-orange sky producing a glow that in unexpected and haunting. The thunder thumps rhythmically as it trumps the morning’s usual sounds of a rooster’s call or a mosque’s call to prayer. The rain wisps its way onto the tin roves in a comforting tap dance echoed above and beyond. It cascades down and slaps the pavement, dust, brush and debris below in a percussive pattern that is deafening and engaging to the senses.

Laying in bed surrounded by, surrendered to and sensing the drowning environment outside, I think about the change that rains bring. The rain changes the weather, the air and the sensation of breathing.

My evening started as an average night of shifting in a light sleep entombed by my mosquito net and beneath a humming ceiling fan circulating a thick embrace of humidity. Drifting in and out of a distracted slumber, the heat and sounds out on the streets beyond my bedroom keep me half asleep and constantly coaxing myself to fall back to sleep. I wake up once, hot and sweating. I wake up again, roll over. I wake up yet again, there is a loud car driving past our house. I wake. I Snooze.

Then I wake up not by sound, not by sweat, not by an alarm clock ushering me up and out. I am not jolted awake. Instead, I slowly regain consciousness in a cold(ish), humming, thundering and pounding storm. The rainy season’s force has set in.

My sleepy thoughts of home, refreshing rain and a life that feels far away drift back into this life as I think about what rains mean in this space. Thinking about this city, my friends, students and coworkers, I realize that this storm is destructive and devastating for countless others. Rains mean water and lots of it in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, that water has no where to go in this city.

Dar es Salaam is a city with no formal garbage collecting system, there are very few drains and rivers are not reinforced with retention walls. Houses consist of tin roofs, open screened windows and shallow septic system. Then of course there is the unorganized, overcrowded system of roads. Infrastructure, or lack there of, is the main issue here. Lack of planning, corners cut and questionable city planning has set up Dar es Salaam situations that hurt people, harm surroundings and hinder development.

The rains are bittersweet. I long for cold afternoons back home but I feel deeply for humid downpours over the homes of my friends, co-workers and life-giving students here. Just as I have oftentimes felt torn between my worlds both here and there, I am torn between my initial emotional reaction to rain and the sad lived reality that it brings to this space and these lives lived here.