April showers in Kigali

Two things happen in April in Rwanda: One, the country marks the anniversary of the genocide. Two, it rains.

A lot.

It’s the rainy season here, and at just about this time — 4:30 pm — there’s a crack of thunder, and the sky spills. Usually, it comes out of nowhere, and in three seconds, you’re drenched to the bone, and shivering. This rain is cold, and when it falls in the middle of a hot afternoon, the shock makes you think it’s colder than any rain you’ve ever felt.

If you’re unlucky, the rain can go on as long as an hour. Sometimes, it stops twenty minutes later, as suddenly as it came. Always, it can rain even harder.

I love the rains. I love the sound of it pounding the dry dirt on my road; I love the way it changes pitch and tempo as more and less falls. I love the smell of the earth drinking.

But sometimes I think about Alice, a genocide survivor I met last year. She survived by hiding in the swamps of Bugesera, possibly the most inhospitable place in the most inhospitable district in all of Rwanda. She hid there for roughly three weeks, maybe longer. She sunk into the swampy waters, buried her body with soggy earth, and waited.

And while she was there, it rained like this.

It must have demanded a thousand times the willpower to survive in these showers than anything you would already imagine.

That’s the part you don’t always hear about, the rain. While thousands of Rwandans were hiding — in forests, on farms, in swamps — it rained Biblically. While bodies were lying on the roads and in the rivers, it rained like God was punishing the damned. Maybe, in Rwanda, that’s how it felt.