Stormy Night

Thunderstorms are not the same in Haiti as in MN. In MN, I could watch the clouds gather and grow and growl across the prairie miles before reaching the sky above me, watching from the safety of my sliding glass door. The lightning would first shimmer in the west, gradually growing in intensity and strength.

There seems to be nothing gradual about the development of a thunderstorm where we are living in Haiti. Nearly every afternoon I expect something when the sky takes an overcast light and the mountains rumble with thunder in the distance, but rarely does anything develop. Perhaps that's why this evening's storm was so successful in sneaking up on me. The sky exploded with a gun powder crack and a flash of light, echoing off the distant mountains and reverberating through the valley. Thunder never seemed so near! It was followed by rain with the kind of heaviness that the tree leaves submit to in drooping form, and branches ready to release their hold fall to the ground with loud groans. Two ripe coconuts and a yellow grapefruit fell with a thud, somehow dislodged by the weight of rain against them.

The one-eyed dog came slinking to the porch, whining like a squeaky tricycle, parking beneath the stair to take shelter from heavy drops against his mangy coat. A softball size toad sat in a large puddle enjoying the deluge. The sound of water against the earth was like the constant of car tires on rainy city streets, with louder splashes where the rain pooled and hurled itself from the roof. And oh, the sweep of cool air that rolled in with the rain! A sweet low air, moist with rain, but cool and fresh against the mugginess of the day – completely delicious and calming.

In MN most storms pass, eager to speed across vast spaces, but here the thunder rolls around the hills and valley, bumping against mountains, turning over in the plains. It lingers, using all it's energy before it lays to rest, like a wind-up toy waiting to fully expire before dropping it's chin to it's chest. The storm here feels more raw and present, as many things do.

The only thing that feels the same is the illumination of landscape for a brief flash of light – the kind I remember laying in bed as child, watching the farm flash into view and then disappear back into darkness.

What feels the most different, though, is the knowledge that as I experience this storm within the safe confines of my concrete walls, not far from me people lay side by side on the dirt floors of their homes while the driving rain leaks through their tin-shad roofs. The lightning brightens the one room they all sleep in through the cracks between the bamboo or rice sack walls. This reality existed before I left the safe world I existed in before coming to Haiti and I rarely gave it a though. Now the truth is too close to ignore. God have mercy on me for ignoring the obvious plight of the poor for so long.