Rain

I opened my eyes and rolled over, groping for my clock on the bedside table—green numbers read 4:07 a.m.

“What am I doing awake?” I asked myself groggily. I settled back into my nest of covers, six in all, and noticed the sound of heavy rain pounding on the roof above. Mystery solved. A very familiar sound, rain, but one I hadn’t heard in months. It had rained maybe twice since I arrived in January, but only lightly. This May night was a real rainstorm that continued steadily all night and into the next day.

Apparently Chile has somewhat of a rainy season, meaning that it rains a lot during the winter usually starting in late April or early May and lasting into late August or early September when spring starts. This winter, however, has been unusually dry. We have only had three or so large rainstorms as of today.

Nonetheless, these few have been rather memorable. Being from the South, I am accustomed to summer downpours and even days of unending rain, but Chilean rain is a completely different thing. Usually the rain begins in the late evening or night and lasts steadily for a number of hours similar to the rainstorms of the southern United States. However, the problems begin when you want to go somewhere in it.

The next day I set out in the rain to go to the supermarket, a relatively simple chore. I don’t have rain shoes or an umbrella, so I donned my tennis shoes and rain jacket and began the 3- or 4-block walk to the store. Within minutes the rain had completely soaked my shoes and pants, and it was completely flooded everywhere. Something about this city being right at sea level or having a sandy foundation or something causes it to flood with only an hour or two of steady rain. I’m not talking about little dinky puddles, but rather the kind that, if you step in them, your foot disappears completely.

I continued walking, thinking I was already soaked so I might as well keep going. A few minutes later, I made it to the crosswalk where the store stood across the street. Walking to the edge of the sidewalk, I stopped and looked down. A small river had formed on the side of the street. Its twin ran down the other side leaving only a small strip of uncovered road in the middle of the street. The river stretched four or five feet from the sidewalk into the road–much too big for me to jump over.

Perplexed, never having encountered this problem before, I begin to backtrack looking for a place to cross the street. I couldn’t go forward because the side street was also largely flooded. I still wasn’t quite soaked enough that I was willing to jump into a 6-inch-deep puddle.

I walked back along the sidewalk peering between the parked cars to see if the river was small enough to jump. About a block later, I came to the large speed bump that runs across the main road. It is raised high enough that I could jump the small stream running over it and use it to cross the street. Checking the traffic, I ran across, balanced like a trapeze artist as I tried not to slip on the slick painted concrete.

I still had to jump across a smaller river to cross the side street between me and the supermarket, but it was fortunately much smaller than the other. So I did finally make it to the supermarket with my hair plastered to my head despite my hood, leaving a trail of water wherever I walked. The other shoppers looked considerably less soaked—maybe their umbrellas has something to do with it.

Having bought a few things, I ventured back out into the rain to take the bus across town. I jumped a few more small rivers and discovered the danger of walking too close to the edge of the busy street. The waves of water the buses could make were exceptionally impressive–three and four feet high.

Peering through the fogged up window of the bus as we crossed the bridge, my mouth fell open at the sight of the river. I use the term river loosely, because normally the mighty Marga-Marga looks more like a glorified drainage ditch off to one side of a dried-out riverbed. The city dwellers normally use the area for parking cars and holding the weekly open-air market.

You couldn’t see the riverbed now because it was full of brown water that churned under the bridge and out to the sea. The river now stretched from bank to bank, shallow, but about six times larger than normal. I wondered, what if you were one of those people who parked in the riverbed, what would happen if you didn’t check the weather or if you didn’t wake up at 4 a.m. when it started to rain…

July 4, 2009