From Under My Umbrella

There was one sound Wednesday morning that made it much easier to pull my sleepy self out of bed. As my ears adjusted from dream land to the world of the awake I suddenly heard the sound of the rain pounding down on the roof above my head and the ground down below. It was music to my ears. I love the rain. It freshens and cools the air, spinning it into silk for my face.
Rewind to six years ago and I would not be declaring my admiration for the wet stuff from the sky. I moved to Seattle, Washington in 2004. In case you did not ace U.S. geography (don’t feel bad most of my friends back home could not locate Sierra Leone on a map) Seattle is in the northwest corner of the United States. Being a neighbor to the Pacific Ocean means we get nine months of rain. The first winter I lived there we attempted to set a new record with 32-straight days of downpour only to have one brief 24-hour dry and gray window before the skies opened up again and unleashed its wrath. I was not pleased. “Who moves to a place where the rain never stops?” I questioned my sanity. Still I stayed in Seattle and my umbrella became my constant companion. Then gradually my disdain for the wetness faded. I got used to it and at some point in the last year I even started to find comfort in it. Rain is home. And now that I am thousands of miles away from Seattle, home is where it rains.
Lucky for me, Sierra Leone has no shortage of rain. With an annual average rainfall of 4,433 mm or 175 in and almost half of that accumulating in July and August it is pretty wet around here. The word “downpour” has a whole new meaning for me. The weight at which gumball-droplets race from the sky is thrilling. And the sound it makes when it reaches earth is not to be rivalled.
On Tuesday I was making my way on foot through downtown. The rain had retreated and my co-worker and I were taking advantage of the reprieve to get back to our office. We were near our destination when the sky darkened and air cooled. Instantly energy surged through everyone on the street. Their paces quickened as they responded to the weather’s memo it’s rain-thirty, again.
Tuesday was the same day that I forgot my umbrella at home. This is a lesson I will hopefully only have to learn once. On Wednesday I left the house with my rubber boots standing lonely by the door. Yet another lesson for the newbie. Still I walked through the rain yesterday with the water running in small rivers down all sides of my umbrella. Zigzagging through the wet streets I admired the women whose strides were not broken by the fact that the various baskets, bundles and bowls they carried on their head were their only form of shelter.
By this point the buckets and barrels that had been set out to catch the rain were overflowing. And although the pavement had been covered in little mirrors of water I was reminded that the rain has much more important purposes than to please my nostalgic nose and eyes. For many in this country and around the world it is the main source of clean water. Our lives depend on water and yet sometimes it can carry in disease and destruction. For Freetown’s Kroobay neighborhood the rainy season means the imminent threat of flooding. The sky’s downpour will collect in the Crocodile River and eventually break free of its banks and invade homes.
As I admire the rain and am thankful for the blessings that most showers bring I also can’t help but be reminded that nothing in this world is perfect not even the water that pours down from the Heavens.
By Lillian Tucker