Rain Dance

The view out the window at Danja’s guesthouse – doesn’t quite communicate the wind!

And so, the rain dance begins. Not a literal dance, conjuring up images of some tribal stereotype – but a mental dance, back and forth.

After a half hour opening salvo last Friday night, the heavens opened at the start of the week. Thought rain was not expected to arrive properly for another few weeks, we were pounded first by dust and wind, and then lashed by a long deluge across the first half of the night. From one of the rooms in the guesthouse we had a grandstand view, and had great fun watching the water inch its way under the door…

Looking out the window, the wind howled, the water drenched, and the lightening lit up the surroundings for miles.

For dry-as-a-bone Niger, already heightened by the apparent onslaught of famine conditions, farmers are presented with a potentially life-or-death decision. The moment they think rainy season has come, and with it the promise of regular soakings for stretch of weeks, everything is put on hold and seed will be sown. Those essential crops are everything to many people: both food and income. Thus, the need to predict the start and length of rainy season is crucial.

The danger is false hope. What if it rains once, but it’s only a precursor to rainy season and not the guarantee of further precipitation? Resources will go to waste, parched on unforgiving, sandy ground.

We had a bit of a fridge problem this week as we moved in to our new home, and found ourselves ‘reduced’ to not-quite-cold water and not-quite-frozen meat. It’s easy to get wound up about this. But within walking distance in every direction, there are people who have to decide whether to stake their families’ livelihood on the decision to sow or not.

When we saw a flicker of lightening in the distance last night, we all began to wonder… but the wait goes on.

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The above was written on Friday afternoon – but I (Peter) didn’t get time to publish it. My typing was interrupted as, in the blink of an eye, a dust storm swept over the compound, reducing visibility to metres and blanketing us in sand. Knowing that this was almost certain to pre-empt more rain, we locked the office and fled to the houses. Shortly after, it began to rain for several hours.

Already, there are shoots of grass starting to appear all over Danja, and for the first time yesterday, I was greeted with the words, ‘How is the planting?’, replacing the by now expected ‘How is the heat?’ Farmers are hitting the fields hard – the sense that prayers have been answered is tangible.

And so, I think we will stick my neck out (though maybe not too far) and declare wet season well and truly HERE!