Rainy Season.

“The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

--William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”









The big rainy season seems to have arrived in Rwanda. Even here in Kigali where it is so often hot and sunny, I have awakened today to the kind of rainy Saturday morning that tempts you to do nothing more ambitious than make coffee, grab a newspaper and go back to bed.

But the rain is badly needed in this country and especially in its capitol city, where a shortage of water during the dry season can mean that even those who live in modern houses with plumbing and electricity that work most of the time must carry their water home in jerry cans just like the refugees in the camps.

I’m sure it is raining this morning in Byumba as well, watering the thousands of tree and vegetable seedlings that our IGP group is cultivating in the nursery at Gihembe Camp. This activity was started by a group of elderly refugees, who when asked what they were capable of doing said, “We can tend the land.” After all, this is what they have done for most of their lives in Congo, where both land and rainfall are plentiful.

They used the money from their grant to build the nursery that you see here and to purchase seeds and other supplies. Within a very short time the activity has expanded to the point where they are hiring other refugees to help them with their work.

So as I sit inside on this damp and dreary Saturday, I think of all of them on the hillside, tending their land, appreciating the rain and the mercy that it shows.