The Rains Return

The rhythm of life in small Guatemalan villages is largely dependant on the whims of the weather. When it rains, stores and homes close their doors and inhabitants retreat inside to sip coffee, talk, and catch up on telenovelas. When the sun shines, the streets fill with food vendors, drying laundry, and old men lounging and sipping on cusha, local homemade liquor. The rains that come every May are expected and anticipated by weeks of planting, preparing the soil to consume what the sky gives and turn it into corn to be eaten as tortillas, tamales, and atoll the rest of the year.

This year the rains came in May and soaked the fields, but in June the rain clouds fled, leaving only sun, drying cornstalks, and concerned townspeople. June came and went without more than a few minutes of rain, as did July and the first summer corn crop was lost. The second was planted in the bone dry soil in hopes that the rains would return, but still not a drop fell. When I talk to the kids in my town, one of their first questions is usually “Carlota, tu no sabes cuando llegare la lluvia?” Charlotte, do you know when the rains are coming? The Mayan traditional religionists hike up into the hills to perform ceremonies pleading for relief of the heat and the drought. The second week of August arrived with promising, dark, saturated rain clouds, but still nothing.

And then they came. Yesterday afternoon as I lounged on my bed, reading and dreaming of the temperate New Hampshire summers and my grandma’s swimming pool, door open in hopes of a breeze, I heard it. The slow and steady build up, the pattering of rain on my plastic laminate roof, a gradual crescendo until I couldn’t hear my own excited laughter over the thunder of giant rain drops drumming on every surface. I’m not sure if the rain is here to stay, to finish out the shortened rainy season; the clouds have again scurried away to hide somewhere in the wibbly, humid sky. But yesterday’s rains have at least given the corn a few days of respite, a long awaited drink.