Life Just Isn't Fair

As some of you may remember, I posted a blog a month or so ago about the beauty of rain and the amazing things it brings people who are lacking many of the luxuries we in the states are so use to. However, this weekend I saw the destruction that rain can cause and the awkward balance of a praised position and an incalculable killer.

It has been raining pretty consistently for 4 days now, sometimes light sprinkles other times so hard that you couldn’t see a foot in front of you. In fact, my front windows are now caked in brown dirt from the rain hitting the dirt around my house so hard. Seeing as it was a long weekend I didn’t venture out much in the community but only found solace in the fact that I knew the community would be rejoicing. To my dismay this notion was incorrect.

On Monday, I decided I had had enough alone time and drove into the city of Acornhoek to visit a friend. As I entered the village center, I was forced to abandon my car on the side of the road because the rain had covered up all the pot holes on the road making it un-navigable for any vehicle more or less my little VW Golf. Typically this would have annoyed me but, today, I was again happy that so many people’s prayers were answered by the rainfall.

I trudged along the side of the road up to my calves in water and sometimes losing my footing as the dirt ground underneath me had been washed away by the rain. I soon turned off the paved road and ventured down a dirt path to my friends houses. No more than 100 meters into my walk down the dirt road did I contend to the fact that I would have to put on new clothes when I arrived at her place, not because I was drenched (which I was) but because the dirt was caked over every inch of my body, even impressively, making its way up to my face.

Soon the dirt road turned into a dirt river and I looked ahead to see if maybe this was a bad idea. Ahead of me I saw what I could now make out were people swimming in waist deep water. I then realized all the shacks along this road were floating (or at least pieces of them). I quickly plunged forward not thinking about my own safety but desperate to see what was really ahead of me and if in some way I may be able to help.

At least 50 people were swimming in the dirty water ahead of me trying to savage pieces of their homes now floating swiftly along the dirt river. Children were perched on their mother’s heads so as to stay safe from the swift moving waters. Higher ground was blanketed with people sitting and watching as their loved ones pulled out the pieces of their homes. They were all surprisingly calm.

I immediately thought back to a conversation I had had in the office last month, the girls were telling me about rainy season and the scary anticipation, mainly because most of the people in the community don’t know how to swim resulting in a large number of unnecessary/ accidental deaths which happens to be the second leading cause of death in this area (behind HIV/AIDS).
While my impulse was to help, having learned how to swim basically before I could walk, I realized I was useless. I called my friend who I was supposed to be visiting and told her I would have to come another day. This was all I could handle for one day and the feeling of uselessness and sadness was inevitable. How could a people that suffer and endure so much on a regular basis be thrown just one more hurdle in life! I guess my mom was right when she use to tell my brother and I that “life just isn’t fair.”