the rain in spain falls mainly on the plain; thoughts on rain, words and other things...

It rained all afternoon today and I couldn’t help but think about…well, rain. Hang on, that’s not entirely true. What I actually couldn’t help but think about was the sunnier prospect of a charming man to roll around in bed with all afternoon while it poured down outside…but I soon realised it would be considerably less disheartening to just stare out the window and watch the rain fall. I am not a big fan of the rain. Never have been. And I think I know exactly when rain and I had our falling out. I was about 8 years old and on my second trip to EuroDisney Paris. Middle of July, just like the first time, raining, just like the first time. Look, raining on my parade is one thing, but raining on Mickey Mouse’s parade should just not be allowed. I am surprised that beside all the other things the fascist corporation of Disney manage to control (did you know that crying children get taken aside and cheered up in secret so as not to upset the grand happy scheme of things?), they haven’t yet figured out a way to control the weather! That said, fascist though they may be, as my all-too-liberal and all-too-rigorous education has taught me…deep down, at my sentimental and uncultivated core, I am wholly, and supercalifragilistically, a Disney fan. (The fan in me looks at that remark and wonders, why the hell would you cry at Disney anyway? Stupid kid.)

I, of course, didn’t cry, but the thought that all two hundred odd photographs in which those magical trips are memorialised depict me in a giant yellow shapeless poncho of a raincoat (Disney™), does often bring me to the verge of tears. So not only did Disney inspire in me a loathing for rain, but for raincoats and all of rain’s other unflattering accoutrements. Which is odd, because, years later I chose to move to London—a city where rain is as much of a landmark as Big Ben. And its not like I didn’t know it was rainy. One of my favourite childhood books was Paddington Bear—not for its content so much as for the fact that somebody had bought it for me from abroad!—and guess what he’s wearing on the cover? A raincoat. Need I add it is yellow? Granted, Paddington Bear’s one is a tad more stylish than Disney’s tent-like contraption, but a raincoat nonetheless. But my dad put an end to all my hesitations by saying, “honey, if the rain gets you down just get one of those cheap flights and go to Spain for the weekend!” Nice dad, huh.

Except, it didn’t really work out like that. I have lived in London for over a year and I still haven’t been to Spain. The only weekend trip I made was to Portugal and that was for a wedding, not for ridding myself of the rainy blues. And the moment I got off that Ryan Air flight I vowed never to take one again. Yes, if there’s one thing I dislike more than rain its Ryan Air. I’m sorry, but sitting on a plane while two moron air stewards ceaselessly yap away in that sickening advertising lingo is not my idea of a holiday. And returning from that holiday at 2am to find yourself in rainy—no, not London—Stansted! is no less than the perfect way to make you forget you went on holiday in the first place. So, no thank you. I’m not even convinced it works out any cheaper after they make you pay extra for everything short of the safety belt. But, besides my loathing for RyanAir, the other reason I didn’t ever take that weekend trip to Spain is that the rain in London never really got to me.

Which is to say, if, as the song goes, “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,” the rain in London doesn’t really fall at all. Like the word itself, the whole affair is rather uneventful, rather blah. A constant r-r-rambling drizzle, not even enough to make it go poetically pit-pat on the roof, or to really get you wet. What was most disappointing was that I invested in a snazzy pair of Burberry wellies, and the most adorable (but, to be fair, rather useless and inconvenient) Burberry poncho—the first, last and only two pieces of clothing I could ever convince my father I really needed—and it turned out I never really needed them at all. (Yes, I know they didn’t really need to be Burberry, but let’s not get all fascist and hasty with the n word; I was, after all, still suffering from post-traumatic-Disney-raincoat-stress-disorder). The one and only morning I put the wellies on because I deemed it wet and miserable enough outside to warrant my serious concern for all my other shoes, I found myself sitting outside a café at noon, in the sun, feeling like an absolute ninny because everyone else was wearing flip-flops. So much for early bird gets the worm. Early bird gets misjudged weather forecast and irredeemable fashion faux-pas. Well, that and a new pair of ballerina flats. What? I had to. If the show must go on, the pas-de-moi will not go on, under the sun, in wellies.

What’s more, as I walked out of the shop in my new leopard-print darlings, I realised I had forgotten my umbrella. Forgotten? Yeah whatever, read it as you wish, purposefully, or not, consciously or sub-, it was gone. And I decided I didn’t really need one. The only function my umbrella ever served was the threatening one of poking pedestrians’ eyes out. Really, I think its time someone came up with a more metropolitan-friendly version of the umbrella.  Instead of focusing on those “smoke-less” cigarettes the RyanAir stewards are forced to sell, inventors and techno-geeks should really be thinking about poke-less umbrellas. I mean, I have my doubts about technology, but the smoke-less cigarette really made me question the intelligence of this age. If it wasn’t smoke we were after, I’m quite certain we’d all be happy sucking on a q-tip, no? But, to get back to rain, q-tip or cigarette, you could smoke an entire one in London without the rain getting it wet enough to put it out. I had gotten so used to rain in London that I stopped using it as an excuse for not going out, and would even willingly go for a walk in the park if it was raining. No, not raining, drizzling. But then it began drizzling snow, and aided by threats of the BA strike to make a hasty decision to go home, I flew back to Zambia (thankfully, RyanAir doesn’t fly there), and I was suddenly reminded what rain was all about.

The chinyanja (one of the main Zambian dialects) word for rain is mvula. How much more performative, more sonorous, more orchestral, just the word itself is. The murmur of the m is like the overture of the gathering, often momentary, of those ominous grey and black clouds, conspiring through their quiet humming for the colossal crash that is about to ensue…the jarring of the m and the v that rolls off the tongue and through the teeth and lips like thunder itself, followed by the orgasmic outpouring of the heavens in that seemingly endless and moaning u, which releases into a lulling and winged l as the pouring, and pitter-pattering get lighter and float into the a, as open and clear and bright as the skies once again become. And even after the curtain has fallen and the entire universe seems to have taken its bow, the memory of the symphony lingers in the silent harmony of the air, with gentle echoes of the applause as it were, all brought to sensuous fruition in what can be described as nothing other than the wondrously spiritual smell of the ozone.

And after a whole afternoon of lying on my bed, alone, watching and listening to this epic concerto, and toying with the word mvula on my tongue, I couldn’t help but fall in love with the rain. I was reminded of a blissful time and place and feeling, before Disney, before London, before RyanAir, of the purity, the simplicity, the thunderous innocence of my childhood. I would give up all the Mickey Mouse parades and weekends in Spain and Burberry accessories for a subscription to an eternity of afternoons such as this…afternoons that give you the perfect excuse to cancel your plans or “take a raincheck” as they say…not because you’ll get wet…but so you can stay home and dance in the rain. And just as I had danced myself to soppy, sentimental reverie and begun typing away…the electricity went out. Turns out, in Zambia, as anywhere else, you can’t have your cake and eat it. See why a fair lady needs a charming man to roll around in bed with?

MaID in Zambia.

I think my first roommate in college suffered as much of a culture shock from rooming with me as I did moving to New York. On what must have been my second or third Monday there, having had a good few weeks to suss each others patterns out, she asked me, “Dude, why the hell do you get up before class on Monday to do your laundry and then leave it all in that neat, ironed, folded, colour-coordinated pile on your perfectly made bed, and why on earth do you make your bed everyday?”

“Well, “ I began, “I do my laundry early on Monday mornings because that’s the only time there is no one else in the laundry room and I can use all the machines….”

“Erm,” she interrupted, “why do you need all the machines?”

Was this a trick question? “So I can do one white load, one dark, and one colour…?”

“You do realize that costs you three times more than just putting it all into one machine, don’t you?”

“Yes, dear, I can do the math, but a new white Ralph Lauren shirt would cost me a lot more than a few quarters if I had to replace the one that the mixed load had tinted pink.” She stared at me with a blank face. So I continued with my explanation, “…and I make my bed everyday and put the laundry on it in that pile because at home my maid did that for me every day, and I’m just used to having it like that. I couldn’t bear to come home to an unmade bed. And seeing as she’s not here to do it for me, I do it.”

“Dude. You have a maid?!”

Yes dude. “Two, actually.”

“Woooooah.” That was the end of that conversation and more or less the end of my making any new friends. News travelled pretty quickly and from that day onward I became known as the rich, snobby, stuck-up Zambian princess….so much so, that a few years later, somebody randomly walked up to me on campus and said, “Sorry to ask you this, but are you, like, really, like, the princess of Zambia (like)?” Erm, no. Dufus.

I spent a lot of time at college trying to justify, explain or just understand where I came from. It’s quite normal to have a maid in Zambia—I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. And I’m not talking about a Pole or Puertoriqueña who comes in once a week for three hours to do a mediocre sweep-mop-flush of a job that will earn her £40, as we have in London. I mean full-time, seven days a week, hands’n’knees scrubbing, ironing and chopping vegetables maid. And they probably get paid about as much as a Polish maid in London could make in a day—monthly! Its normal. But try explaining that to a bunch of ultra-left-wing, pot-smoking, ‘we-are-the-people’ people who don’t even drink Starbucks coffee because, oh lord knows why, somebody somewhere in the coffee picking labour chain didn’t get enough pats on the back. It took me a long time to understand, and then to accept, that things were relative…a long time to earn a measure of perspective. And perhaps all too ironically, I have two people to thank for that—my maids. For just as my roommate had her “Dude!” moments on that side of the ocean, my maids have their own almost everyday on the other side.

One day, having found me in my room when she came in to put that neatly stacked pile of laundry on my bed, she carefully picked out a piece of my underwear, held it up under the light like a lab specimen of guinness-book-worth-curiosity and said, “Madam, what is this?” Uh-oh. The word “thong” was too generous a title for the item she had in her hand, even “g-string” bordered on the euphemistic, that little number was just a string.

“Its underwear Agnes…panties,” I responded, knowing exactly what was coming next.

“But how do you wear this?” she said turning it around like it was a Rubik’s cube. Fearing that any attempt at explanation would only further entangle her confusion, I just put it on over my clothes and in a ta-da! tone said, “Like this!” Noticing the even more bemused look on her face, I glanced down just to make sure I had put it on right (you never know), which I had, but I suddenly realized what her next question was going to be for in that moment it formed in my mind too. “What the bloody hell is the point of that!?” To put a simple end to the conversation, I just said, “well when you wear underwear like this under trousers or a skirt then you don’t see the lines from the underwear.” To which she only had one response:

“Crazy mzungus.” (Crazy white people). I don’t think I’ve worn a g-string since. I either go seamless or commando, but I’d hang myself on that string before I ever put it in between my bum-cheeks again. Thank heavens. And Agnes.

Pelina, the other maid, who works mostly in the kitchen and is spared from the quantum physics of figuring out crazy white people’s laundry, has a whole different set of questions. Upon noticing a photograph of a sculpture from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York one afternoon, she said, “Madam, what’s this?” with a rather cheeky grin.

“A sculpture,” I responded, not quite getting the joke, adding, “you know, like the independence sculpture in front of the supreme court?” to give her a local point of reference.

“Ahhh, yes! Like a piece of art?”

“Exactly!” I exclaimed, rather impressed, and thinking the Q&A duly accomplished.

“But, eh, Madam…” she then pressed, as the cheeky grin turned into a light giggle, “why is it naked?” I couldn’t help but laugh. We sweetly laughed together like schoolchildren who had just encountered a pair of older students kissing in the playground. Though I am still searching for a way to answer this one…

A few days later, watching me as I put my hand in and out of a duck’s bum filling it with stuffing, she said, “Madam, are those your nails?”

“Yes,” I said, holding them up so that we could both admire my recently painted French manicure. She took one of them in her hand, and touched it with the wondrous gaze of a toddler fondling his mother’s colossal fingers for the first time.

“Sure, madam?” she asked again, in disbelief, “with this white tip?”

“Yes, Pelina, they are mine, but they are painted to look like this. Why, you don’t believe me?”

“No, madam, it’s just that us we buy nails like this from the market. Exactly the same.” So, its not only mzungus who are crazy. (Stuffing duck is an altogether different matter).

And the latest…my all-time favourite moment of perspective enlightening: Having put my iPhone down on the table as I reached to get something from the fridge, she looked at it in awe, and said, “Ahhhh, Blackberrrrrry,” with an enunciation that so piercingly revealed her pride in knowing its name. “iPhone” I gently corrected her. “Its your phone?” Erm, yes. It is indeed.

But as I walked away, I was suddenly reminded of those first few weeks at college again…when amongst millions of other things, I discovered that everyone, everyone, had an iPod. “Your whaaaaaaaaat?!” If only I could respond to that now! Whatever dude, yourPod, iPerspective.