YaBoi and the Rains.

The rains are a month late. YaBoi, my host mother, remarks on it everyday. Every evening as we sit on the mat in the middle of the compound, relaxing, listening to the radio, looking at the stars. She points to the stars and just mutters to herself..."Taw bi neekut fi wala mungee now, mungee now, The rain is not here but it is coming, it is coming." The power of positive thinking I suppose. Maybe she figures if she believes hard enough, the rains will listen to her plea and come ease the anxieties of thousands of farmers. Maybe she is just making conversation with me and knows that I understand these Wolof words, if not much else. For the rainy season she is growing the tiny red peppers that all women in my village plant in abundance every June. Since the rains have not come, she goes to the garden everyday and waters her plants by hand. Heavy work that is usually done by nature.

YaBoi is tired. It is hard to tell how old she is exactly. Like most people here, she has no idea when she was born and isn't even able to make an estimate. She has had nine children, six have survived and those children are doing well. They are fulfilling the desire that all mothers have for their children - to work hard and have an easier life than their parents before them. She does know that she was born in Senegal though and as a child the rains came in April. Here it is July and she is fetching hundreds of buckets from the well by hand to water the peppers each day. All of this in addition to her normal household tasks of cooking, sweeping, farming, fetching firewood, fetching water for the house, and the countless other tasks in a day that women here do without a peep of complaint. Even PaSaine has noticed that she is tired. He doesn't offer to fetch is own bath water, but still he notices. And that counts for something in a culture where most men wouldn't.

So YaBoi will go on being tired and go on worrying about the rain. Sometimes in the middle of the night the wind rushes in from the coast, rustling the trees and rousing YaBoi from her bed. Every night, she is sure that the gusts of wind signal the long anticipated rain. She rushes from her bed and eagerly puts buckets out to catch the rain water that will surely spill from the rooftops. She secured windows and doors. She covers the firewood. She is always disappointed when she wakes in the morning to find no water in her buckets, her wood bone dry. Yet with every midnight gust, she repeats the same rituals and she waits.

Another night in mid July, sitting out on the mat. Joking, listening, thinking. YaBoi looks at me, and me at Awa, one of my sisters. We are listening to the leaves rustle in the trees. I look at the clouds moving over my stars, the stars I have come to Africa to stare at every night. I say quietly, almost a whisper for fear the ancestors will laugh at this naive toubab who thinks she can predict the weather, "Tey ci gudi, dinna taw, Tonight, it will rain." YaBoi turns to me and chuckles, exchanging knowing glances with Awa. "Iyo" she responds in Sereer "inshalla". Yes, God willing.

That night I hear YaBoi awake with the wind, as she has many nights before. But tonight, the rains come. The next day, we go to the farm.