31

November 14th 2006, my eyes opened and moments later the sky opened, releasing the no-longer-bearable-weight of the year’s first rain. I thought briefly of all the homes I have visited with flecks of sky shinning through their tin roofs, of all the mud brick village huts with decrepit thatch roofs, and then of all the fields sitting ready, waiting; dry soil tilled in neat expectant rows. Rain would beget work and happiness and hope; it was a good omen for a birthday. In the past people sowed their fields at the same time every year but the increasingly unpredictable timing of the rains has prompted change. People now wait to see that the rains have come to stay before planting, to avoid the withering of tender crops, coaxed from the soil by early rain then betrayed by relentless heat.