Rain (again)!

I woke with as start as the room reverberated with the sound of thunder. My eyes closed again sleepily but even so I ‘saw’ the lightening through my closed eyelids seconds later. The rains had arrived with full on force. I sat up and yawned as again, my room is lit up as a huge streak of lightening sizzled down from the heavens. I checked my phone, 2:15 in the morning, arse!

I love a good lightening storm. All that power, noise and light created out of nothingness by nature. So I sat in bed and watched through the mosquito net as the lightening exploded out of the darkness time and again, counting the seconds between lightening and thunder to discover how far away the storm was. I love it when you see a really big bolt of lightening and you know the thunder that is ‘slowly’ making it’s way towards you is going to be immense. And then it hits, the walls shake, the dogs whimper and you feel utterly alive.

This morning, long after the storm had passed, the scene was serene. As I sat outside and had breakfast, nature seemed to be fully alive, as if refreshed by the night’s storm. Birds were delirious, singing, chirping, larking about and generally having a good time. Frogs, crickets and a host of other noisy creatures were all making a racket and the smell of soil starting to breath for the first time in months was heady in the air.

The rains are late this year compared to last year. Sixteen days to be exact and everyone suffered in the (lovely) heat that I will always associate with Africa. Living in high thirty degree heat while Europe shivers its way into winter brings pure joy to me as I sit smugly sweating my brains out, in blissful self-denial about what I will return to in three weeks. Now the real business of Chikuni, cultivating maize, will start. Everywhere, ox drawn ploughs will start moving up and down fields from predawn to dusk. Families will follow behind, sowing maize seed in the ploughs wake. What was brush and scrub land will suddenly be transformed into farmland as each family tries to grow as much as they can manage, and maybe even a bit more than that. I just hope I get to have some roasted green maize before I go back now (not likely).