The Rainy Season

The rainy season of Nicaragua brings sun in the morning, creeping clouds soon after lunch and short-lived, pounding rains in mid-afternoon.  The next day, we start all over again. Rarely do we enjoy a gentle warning of tiny drops, announcing the arrival of their louder, more aggressive counterparts. There is only one volume setting on these clouds and it is “11.” The roar of rain makes an orchestra of diverse sounds as the giant drops bounce off the soil, grass, trees, brick, metal, wood, and any unlucky human or animal caught without shelter.

In a matter of days, the brown, scorched landscape glows with more kinds of green that

I can count. The earth wakes up from months of tossing and turning in the sweltering, uneasy sleep of the dry season. The trees stretch their branches skyward and bathe in the sunlight and rain. The rice paddies happily drink in the rain, blanketing acres of open land with shallow water and new green shoots.

The buckets of rain tossed from the clouds slashes the heat of the day about 10 degrees and with luck, it will drop a couple more degree before evening, before my time to negotiate an uneasy sleep with the ever-present summer heat.

While the cooling effect of the rain is welcome, it comes at the price of often overwhelming and destructive force. High sidewalks and deep trenches are needed to wrestle with the power of the rain that only bursts out of the sky in large quantities. Some homes endure the rains better than others but everyone knows that the rain can invade our lives whenever it chooses. It is not a battle that can be won or lost. It is the daily negotiation of between nature and humans, fundamentally unequal opponents. We normally run to shelter with the rains starts. But sometimes it’s best just to give in to the rain, to stand motionless in torrent, getting soaked to the soul, drinking in a season that might make me greener, stronger, and more fruitful than before.