And the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down

April in equatorial Africa is the time when the short rainy season is supposed to happen, and a few times since I have been here we have had some impressive thunderstorms in the night. The talk has often included reference to the weather, but mostly to note that the rains haven’t been as much as they should be, and the farmers might lose a harvest if the rains don’t come soon and water the seeds that have been planted.

Yesterday morning it started raining at around 5.30am, and it poured down for a good hour plus – the impact on me: I didn’t get up and go for a run at 6.15am (the only time to consider running as it is too hot any time later than that). Everything else happened as planned – we visited the Acholi quarters to discuss team visits to them later in the year, Natalie and I got all the things done that we wanted to in the afternoon, John and Sophie’s washing lady got the washing done and hung out to dry, the sun dried up the dirt roads so everywhere was accessible. Nothing more impacting on me than missing out on a run (and I don’t think my body minded that too much either!)

Today it started raining at around 5.30am again, and as I write this at 7.30am it is still going strong. Result – for me I’ve missed another chance for a run, but I still have a dry place to rest, I still have breakfast waiting for me, I still have clean dry clothes to put on (even if the ones washed yesterday are getting another rinse due to being left out on the line last night), and getting to church is OK as we can go there in the car.

Compare that with the impact this rain will be having on the Acholi community we visited yesterday, where the alleyways between the little one-room, mud-wall, tin-roof houses will have turned from hardened sun-baked earth to a river of mud, mixed with rubbish and sewage. And where the tin-roofs will be showing their leaks in a very clear way.

The houses are homes to many, and as well as being sleeping quarters, in this weather they are the place where the children are confined with too little space and nothing to do, as well as where the mother tries to heat some water on the charcoal stove to give them a warming drink; hot open stoves and cooped up, bored children is not a good recipe – Lord may there be no accidents resulting in burnt or scalded children.

When any of them do go outside – to the loo, or to get water, or to run an errand etc, they don’t have a waterproof to put on, or decent shoes. They don’t even have much of a change of clothes when they get back dripping wet. Life in a rainstorm takes on a very different perspective for these people.

But my thoughts don’t only go to the Acholi people at this time. They also go to the street kids that I have worked with in previous years. These kids have no change of clothes, no roof over their heads at all, no charcoal stove to warm some water on for a hot drink. They shelter in doorways, or under old vehicles. Sometimes they’ll sleep in the massive ditches that act as drains and catch the run-off from the roads when it rains – Lord may none of them have been sleeping there last night, and if they were may they have woken and got out before being drowned by the deluge of water that now runs through all those drains.

The impact of the rain on those kids is big, especially when it continues on and they have a choice either to stay in any sheltered area they can find to stay dry but hungry; or to venture out to scavenge for food and get cold and wet but hopefully fill their stomach a little bit. What sort of a choice is that for anyone to have to make, especially a child of 8 or 9 who is on the streets simply because the new step-mother didn’t want any children in the house from the previous mother and so threw them out, or abused them so much they ran away (one of the commonest reasons for street children here is rejection of children from a previous marriage).

Of course the rain is needed – the farmers will be so relieved at this point – but my heart goes out to those I know of living just a few miles away, and for whom this rain has an impact so much more than just missing a morning run. Lord watch over them, and be with them in their time of need.