This Too, Like the Rain, Shall Pass

Rain pounds on my metal roof, deafening and constant.  I shift my position at my desk to avoid the trickles of water from the ceiling while avoiding the small puddles that have accumulated on the floor.  The hard packed dirt spurns this much needed rain and responds stubbornly, now becoming cement like and flooding the yard and path leading out to the main street.  The rain has been coming down for hours, on and off, and all activity has stopped.  The neighborhood is mostly silent.

Then, as if someone turned a switch, the rain abates.  The men in the carpentry shop next door take up their saws.  Neighbors call back and forth to one another from their open doorways.  A rooster crows.  The thud of a base beat from a stereo replaces the pounding of the rain.  The day begins.  Again.   I trust that my neighbors know the cycles of the rain and start to gather my things to make my way to work, three hours after my usual starting time.

I pack my shoes in a plastic bag, planning to wear flip- flops.  My umbrella in hand and a bandanna at the ready I look out beyond my flooded porch.  The path is strewn with the garbage that normally is packed into the sides of the road.  I try to gauge the conditions of the path, knowing that underneath the puddles the ground is slick and slippery.  The skies are gray but quiet, one of the only variables encouraging me to venture out.  I can find a million reasons to stay put.  But one reason outweighs all of the others.  I am tired and  just can't find the desire.

Only a few short months ago I enjoyed my walk to work; greeting my neighbors and viewing the activities of this busy town.  Before reaching the main road I would pass three carpentry shops brimming with strips of lumber, the bark still on, to be transformed into bed frames, heavy wooden doors and tables, made mostly with hand tools.  A tire shop serving the large trucks that delivered this lumber and took the furniture to all parts of Mozambique and beyond, was strategically adjacent.  Men sat in the dirt repairing the blown tires and replacing them on the metal wheel wells, again with only hand tools.

Young boys with yellow and red and orange vests circulated among the crowds selling phone credit.  The colored strips of paper, matching their outfits, littered the ground. Women and young girls, selling fried bread from their plastic buckets, sat on low stools or on the ground, holding umbrellas to shield themselves from the scorching sun.  In the afternoon, they add brightly colored sugar flavored water to their inventory, selling them in small plastic bags, hanging from a stick.

The small shops, made of sticks and discarded lumber and metal, hawked bags of bread rolls, matches, small plastic bags of oil, approximately three tablespoons each, for those who didn't have the money for an old water bottle filled with cooking oil, small packets of detergent and beer.  Next to them piles of fruit lined the highway.  Mountains of mangos and pineapples, now in season, offset the stench of the dried fish in baskets, the last item in this busy road-side stop.  Bicycle taxis stood at the ready, offering their services anywhere in town for the small price of five metacias, roughly fifteen cents in US currency.

All of this activity took place across from the parked buses and small mini-vans, loaded with bundles of produce tied in bright fabrics, boxes tied precariously with string, stacks of plastic chairs, cheap foam mattress, bicycles and live goats and chickens. People milled about, waiting for the buses to sell enough tickets to raise the money to purchase the gas to begin the journey.

All of this enthralled me once; the activity and its accompanying flood of sights, sounds and smells.  I loved entering into this panorama every morning, each day stepping into the scene of a movie set.  And with time, the faces became familiar.  Greetings exchanged and, with a few, inquiries about family and business and work.  There is nothing as heart warming as being recognized in a place and feeling welcomed, feeling a sense of belonging, of community and place.

But the movie set has become real, the characters not actors but actual people living hard and desperate lives.  The activity has become so very tiresome, with all its noise, dirt and pollution and refuse.  The greetings seem insufficiently and unsatisfying lately, as I walk back and forth from work, each morning and afternoon, like a metronome, keeping time so efficiently but affecting little.