A Rainy Day

We walked along the stony sand path towards the river in the distance. We saw grassy bush land, full of trees. Far away, about five kilometres or even a day’s walk, was more trees and giant boulders on top of boulders on the land. There were many mountains .The largest mountain, Inyangani known for the disappearances of the missionaries in nineteen seventy. Through tufted green grass we walked, also looking in front and at our feet casually, making sure we had made no contact with any zongororos. Rumours had it if you stepped on one, one would break one’s mother’s back or have bad luck. (Take NO chances!). It was sunny day that morning on our way to school. For a change there were five of us: Tinashe, Ropafadzo, Edward, Modina [who was to start school that day] and of course me. If you have been reading carefully it was a sunny day and because of that, I was wearing dark tawny- coloured shirt and khaki coloured shorts. I noticed things I had never seen before - clouds in different shapes and sizes. I recall some names from geography. At another moment we spotted a monkey that stole Tinashe’s hat. Unfortunately the start to a beautiful African day ended…

Rain!! Edward yelled to us. If only we had our umbrellas at the time. My brothers, my sister and I started to dash through the windy cold rain like wildebeest running from a lioness in the savannah. We began to feel cold and really wet –- after all hot day clothes are not suitable for rainy day. The rain poured and poured .It poured so much we had to wipe our eyes to be able to see where we were going. Even though we put over satchels over our heads, the weather just got better and better. Wow, what a delightful day it has been so far I wonder what could happen now? Something worse than this well I hope not... SPLASH!
I fell as the others were jumping to the other side of the river. You see because of the heavy pouring rain I could not really see where I was going until I fell. As I got up with the help from Ropa, the sun came out of its hiding place behind the clouds. Just my luck there was no way I could just go back to the house after all it was roundabout two kilometres away from this area. My clothes were muddy. The sight of me would even frighten our own mother. The stench of my clothes was nauseating. My guess is that even a skunk would faint if it would have taken a whiff of my clothes. My brothers and my sister were lucky because soon the sun would dry up their wet garments whilst mine would reek of mud. It made me think of what my mother would have said to us:”Imi! Sei hamuna kutora maumbrella?” –“You children why didn’t you take umbrellas”Kana zuva riri po tora ma umbrella zvakanaka.” – “Even if the sun is out you should take your umbrellas see now your garments need to be hung.”Taonga enda uno geza vakazviba”-“Taonga you are dirty why don’t you go and have a bath”.

The arrival at school obviously wasn’t pleasant. Girls giggled a lot. Elder boys in grade seven mocked and laughed at me cruelly. One of my friends, Jon Edgebright asked what happened to me that morning but before I could begin… Ding Ding Ding the bell rang. My entrance into the first lesson was even more better my first subject was Science one of my favourite subjects but today I changed my mind. My professor shouted at me for coming to school in a shaggy state, for getting my homework wet from when I fell into the river and not being ‘organised and responsible’. At least I got to stay for the subject and learnt about the signs, causes and preventions of malaria. Lessons like these the most important in a school boy’s life. One needs to know the signs of the disease just in case one has it and also of how to prevent it. The following lesson was Geography which turned out to be horrendous. I was sent to the headmaster because the next teacher could not tolerate me. But luckily the headmaster didn’t shout he just said things like these happen and offered me a cup of tea.

“It was just one of those African days,” He said.