I was fortunate to grow up in and be educated in schools (well pre-school) which clearly taught nursery rhymes. One of my favourite was, of course, “rain rain go away”, because we were allowed to remix the rhyme.
I personally used to sing it as “rain rain go away little Sibongile wants to play” and fortunately I was little then.
The rhyme, as old as it is, in my opinion, shows that since time immemorial, rain has been a challenge for humankind. We like rain, but we do not like too much of it, as it is the common saying that too much of a good thing is not good. I know in Eswatini we like to say that rain is a blessing, but is it? I am basing this on the havoc that the rain has caused in the past month.
Personally, my challenges with the rain are very little because all I’ve really had to worry about was my washed laundry, which has been on the washing line for about two weeks now. Once or twice the sun was out last week, but being at work I had no one to pick up the laundry, so here we are wearing clothes we haven’t worn in years.
Another challenge the rain has personally caused me is getting to the bus stop on a daily basis; hence the little money I have, I had to spend it on taxis to get here and there.
My challenges, however, do not compare to the hundreds of Emaswati who have lost their homes and had their property totally destroyed because of the rains.
Just when one was getting excited about the King’s initiative, through the office of the deputy prime minister, to build proper houses for the vulnerable and elderly, we are back to square one. There was already a long list of people who were patiently waiting to move into new houses constructed by government with the help of NDMA and Baphalali Eswatini Red Cross Society, but now one can only watch and weep.
Even worse, in some instances, when people had their houses destroyed they would find shelter in nearby schools or churches, but with this rain we are currently experiencing, even the school structures have not been spared from the horrible downpour.
I was speaking to one of my staunch Christian friends who is convinced that once again God is here to clean the earth again like He did during the era of Noah.
“You see, the world and Eswatini in particular, has not been God fearing of late with all the killings, rapes, corruption and on and on,” my Christian friend stated. She said as a result, God was bringing the rain to remind us that we were now over-sinning and perhaps the rain was a reminder.
She insisted that praying would not help these days as the world needed cleansing. As much as I believe in God, I tried to sway her mind into climate change mode to state that what was happening was merely because of climate change, but she dismissed me.
She stated that climate change is a word made up by countries to try and get more money, but insisted that what is happening in the world was just plain God’s wrath.
Anyway, I was six years old in 1984 when the country experienced zamcolo, interestingly in January too. This current rain has reminded me of the same situation although at that time all I was excited about was not going to school and would sit in my grandmother’s bosom and enjoy the warmth of her coal stove.
Although schools opening has been postponed for at least a week, I do not think that even teachers are happy about the reason for the postponement because schools, especially the ones in the rural areas, are in a mess. The structures are once again destroyed, let alone the teachers’ houses, so they will be going back to more problems.
One cannot help but feel sorry for the Ministry of Public Works and Transport because a lot of this falls on their lap. However, the ministry can also be blamed for taking forever in upgrading the country’s road infrastructure because for a while, the weather had allowed good conditions to upgrade the roads, but every time you would hear that government does not have enough money to fix this and that.
For over five years, there have been roads on the waiting list for them to have proper base implemented and money always allocated in Minister Neal’s budget to fix feeder roads, but nothing at all has been actioned until, as my friend says, God became extremely angry with us.
While we all look for solutions on how to come out of this messy situation, I would like to ask those who can assist to help some of the families who have greatly suffered from this. This is not the time to be pointing fingers at government, but for us all to come together and fix our country.
Meanwhile, let me go back to singing my nursery rhyme because God knows I really miss the sun and also need my clothes to dry up.
Until next week, do not forget to be kind.
