KENYA BEYOND 2005

The other night I was caught in the middle of a storm. Not of the political or social nature, but of the rain variety. I have watched storms come and go from the safety of my house, but never have I driven in one. It began with the splattering of heavy rain drops on my windscreen. There was the rumbling of distant thunder and flashes of lightning. These were not new to me. I grew in the tropics where rain is often accompanied by thunder and lightning. A mile up Highway 301 north, I met with the fury and wrath of the gods of thunder. Lightning and thunder were trying to out do each other. Flashes of lightning lit the road so often I nearly put down my sun visor. Thunder was no longer rumbling and distant but was making itself known to me in a cascade of noise all around my car. One time it was the loud clapping on my ears the other the sharp staccato bedlam threatening to split my eardrums and render me deaf. The rain itself was heavy and incessant. I was leaning forward trying to maintain my driving on my side of the lane. With lights on and the wipers on maximum I could hardly see beyond twenty feet. I tried the full beam and it came right back at me. I therefore settled for the low beam and trudged on. I thought I was driving too fast and checked only to find I was doing 35mph. for a while I saw no other vehicle on the road and I wondered, could there have been a call for vehicles to keep off the roads. I checked the radio and they were happily playing their music, no mention of the storm. So much for local storms.

Why must the gods fight in the middle of the road and when I was driving there? I had one mission, outrun the storm. The weatherman had said the storms would be localized, I therefore knew I would get out of it in a little while. And sure enough by the time I got to Sharpburg, the storm had died, I had actually outrun it. And so I drove in the drizzle and got to Rocky Mount. By the time I parked my car the storm had caught up with me. It took a straight line while I followed all the meandering of the road. The storm was furious that I had attempted to outrun it and cheat it from beating down on me. So it summoned all its fury and beat upon my car making it impossible for me to get out. It summoned all its relatives, lightning thunder, wind and beat upon me. My mind started wondering can you be hit by lightning while inside a vehicle? This thought made me cling away from the window.

The storm did eventually pass and I was safe from its vagaries and fury. As I sat in the vehicle waiting for it to subside I remembered a story told me by my Masai friend. In the Masai folk role it is believed that when you have just a drizzle or splattering of raindrops, the god of rain was actually urinating elsewhere and decided to shake in your area. You end up with a sprinkle of rain drops. With this wisdom, I realized the gods of rain really meant to urinate on my car this night. I hate to think what the thunder and lightning was.