- We lost power at the Clinic for several days
- We’ve lost power in the office nearly every day, for several hours each time
- Our land line was out for three days
- The thunderstorm fried our internet system
- We got it back but the internet provider went out
- Dirt access roads have been less “road” and no “access”
- Our main road has flooded with traffic stopped for hours
- Our bathroom flooded, so seriously that the video footage (oh yes, there’s video!) looks like we had a shower installed directly in the drop ceiling
And yet, I love the rainy season. I will take
all of these inconveniences and more, gratefully. Because here’s what else happens in the rainy
season:
The air clears of dust and
smog, and the whole world comes into focus.
Sounds come closer,
everything gets quieter and greener and a little bit foggy and cooler and a LOT
more humid.
When the internet goes out,
and the telephones are down, we get up and go find each other to give messages.
When the electricity goes
out, so do we. We sit down somewhere cool and have conversations that wouldn’t
happen if the lights were on. And when
it’s dark those conversations are more intimate and immediate than they would
be with lights.
Best
of all, nobody expects anything to run smoothly in the rainy season. On
Friday I went to a big event at the Batahola Norte Cultural Center with
hundreds of people in attendance under the center’s main roof – which is
open-sided. It was late afternoon, when it
often clouds up. Predictably, just as
the event was beginning, we got a downpour.
So much rain blew in the open walls of the Center that people put their
umbrellas up inside and staff were sweeping water back outside as fast as it
was filling up the stage-front area. But
there was no wailing and gnashing of teeth, no short tempers or angry
patrons. There was a lot of good-natured
smiling and shaking of heads and shrugging of shoulders. There was huddling
children together, and sharing of umbrellas, and lots of patience. When the Center’s damp students finally took
the stage, there was wild applause and the show went on despite intermittent
electrical outages.
During
the rainy season in Nicaragua, we lose the illusion that we are in control. We
make plans and they are thwarted, we try to go somewhere and find we can’t, we
watch as roads become rivers powerful enough to pull cars off their paths. We are reminded on a daily basis that we’re
not in charge, and that is very good for us.
I
love the rainy season. I love its unpredictability. I love its
intimacy. I love its generosity. I love that during the
rainy season we have all the time in the world to stop and help pull a neighbor
out of the mud, to have a conversation, to laugh and shrug our shoulders.
The
rainy season makes us humble, and that is good. - Becca
