Here comes the rain again

It has been so dry these last few months; the dust, the heat, the humidity, and hills were parched. The beautiful green Rwanda we know has been a shadow of itself, the verdant hills have patches of dusty rocky outcrops. Now I am an amateur farmer, I love the rain, it means I can make a profit, or wear a sweater, or sleep in a really warm blanket without bursting into sweats periodically. There is of course a trade-off, and the mud will not be enjoyable, you can at least wipe the dust off your shoes but mud sticks. I love how the rain brings out eccentricities in people, like when children go out and play in puddles. I love doing strange things that confuse Rwandans; Rwandans are so conformist that it doesn’t take much to flabbergast them. Simply drink from a soda bottle without a straw and you will get the biggest looks of bewilderment, like they saw a flying elephant. One time, I lived in a house with only periodic supplies of running water. It was raining so I thought I’d have a shower, I grabbed a bar of soap and went out into the dark night and had a bath in the rain. The security guard would have called the doctors to take me away, but he didn’t have airtime. He scolded me “Rama; that was really stupid, you can’t go out in the rain like that! You’ll catch malaria.” I declined his medical advice on how exposure to rain infects you with plasmodium. It made me think it was kind of rational; infections of malaria go up during the rainy season because of more pools of stagnant water for breeding mosquitoes. He always spoke to me cautiously after that, speaking to me like you talk to an unhinged person. Having a pet is even more confusing to a Rwandan, I have a white cat that I brought in to solve the neighbourhood rat crisis we had about a year ago. Rats had infested our row of houses. The rats were even brazen enough to greet you in broad daylight; I even gave some of them names. The cat carried out a purge of the rats and feasted daily on the poor things. The thanks the cat got was to get stoned by every passing pedestrian till my windows were nearly broken. When the man from the security detail came to collect his monthly fee, he asked the name to put on the receipt, I said put the cat’s name “Ernestine Gapussy.” His expression was priceless. Ends