I Bless The Rains Down in Africa...
While I do love rain and probably always will I have to share this experience with you.
Today, I was walking home from the market after class. I was about 5 minutes away from my house when people started running past me. I immediately thought something terrible had happened. People sprinting past me on both sides, motos and bikes passing me at top speed. People started yelling at me to run and turned to see what they were running from when I heard it.
This is a sound I have quickly become accustomed to in Rwanda. You will hear it raining about a mile away and you know you have 1-2 minutes to find cover from the rain.
Of course, at this particular moment I am in the part of my walk where there is not one store to duck into. While it is a cultural norm to knock on someones door when its raining, I will probably never be comfortable with that, so I continue walking and hope it just sprinkles for the last 5 minutes. Of course, it didn’t. A Torrential down pour started and the last couple people on the street run past me. Now I am alone walking as quickly as possible when the wind started. My skirt starts blowing up and dirt starts to hit my face. The last few minutes of my walk feel like they took an hour and I finally stepped into my families house. I was dripping wet at this point and my youngest sisters immediately ran up to me and started
laughing. My other sisters grabbed my phone and started taking pictures of this beautiful sight. 30 seconds after I stepped into the house the rain stopped.
While I do love rain, I have yet to adapt the Rwandan culture of never being in the rain. My clothes are currently hanging in my room dripping onto my floor and I quickly changed and crawled into bed to watch a movie.