A Hard Rain a goina Fall

There’s a drought in Mozambique this year. It’s really bad up in Gaza and Inhambane Province. Their crops won’t grow. They can’t sustain life up there. People are starving each and every day. Nothing to see but brown fields and dead trees. When I think of that suffering, I think about the comforts that I rest upon each day here in Maputo. I ate something tasty this morning that I did not grow myself. I ate something at lunch today that I did not cook myself. Every night I go to sleep with a full stomach. Every single night. And yet somehow I find the audacity at times to complain that I am hungry. There are many here that can only dream of the luxuries that I take for granted on a daily basis. Their tummy’s scream and their lips are parched as they call out,

“Feel my hands
as they rise from the soil
and touch this land
on fire
without the water
to cool the sting
and soften the grip
of starvation”

Then this weekend the prayers of a nation were answered. The skies roared and the heaven’s poured out their baptism upon a people who had been thirsting for such a blessing for months on end. This was the beginning of the rainy season and the beginning of new life in southern Mozambique. Already sprouts have shot up overnight and the flowering trees are putting on their coats of many splendid colours. This is a pattern of life that people in this part of the world have risen and fallen alongside for thousands of years. Such long periods of suffering and then such sudden changes in fortune. And now I hear that Winnipeg’s fortunes have turned as well. 30 centimeters of snow in one day! Whew have fun digging yourselves out of that one you guys!