Unending Rain

Whenever someone, especially an American, says how miserable all the rain is in Wales, I switch into a protective parent mode.

“It doesn’t rain as much as it seems. All the rain is what makes such a beautiful country. There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing to go in the weather.”

Even though Wales isn’t my place of birth, I’ve spent my entire adult life post university, so 13 years, here. I must defend her, even when she is defenceless. Like the parent whose child is clearly at fault for stealing, and yet she makes every excuse for his behaviour.

Because the truth is, it really does rain a lot in Wales.

When I first moved here, I remember thinking how cold it always felt. But it wasn’t actually very cold. We have a relatively mild climate. But the wetness creeps into your clothes, and then your bones, and it’s very difficult to get rid of it.

Some of my most miserable domestic moments have been in the rain.

Not being able to find parking outside of our terraced house, parking a five-minute walk down the hill, walking up with bags of shopping, carrying a car seat with a baby in it, yelling at a toddler to stay away from the road – all in the rain.

Driving to London to collect my mum from the airport at 5am, when the windshield wipers stopped working on the motorway – in the rain.

School runs, in a coat that isn’t waterproof, waiting for a teacher very keen to keep the kids as late as possible – in the rain.

The last six months have seemed particularly horrible.

Apparently, in March, Wales recorded more than 150% of their long-term average monthly rainfall. I don’t know exactly what that means, except that it has rained a lot. It’s the never-ending winter. Today is the third of May, and I’m still wearing a winter coat, carrying an umbrella at all times.

Our house smells wet, despite the expensive dehumidifier. Our coats smell wet. Our coaches smell wet.

You don’t even have to look out the window in the morning, you can hear what the weather is. Rain.

I’ve been stuck in a perpetual complaint about the rain, primarily because it massively affects my mood.

In an interview yesterday, I interviewed a woman from Anguilla in the Caribbean. She noted how good her mood tends to be simply because of the sunshine. I can only imagine. Instead, I’m dependent on Vitamin D supplements and caffeine.

I’ve even prayed to God for sun on my lowest days, convinced that sitting in the sun would bring my low mood reprieve. As if he’d part the clouds just for me.

Do you know who else is praying for the rain to stop?

People in Kenya.

This week, we had a Kenyan man, Wicklife, who runs a children’s home in Kenya stay with us. After speaking with friends and family back home, he said the rain was destroying homes, markets, villages, farms. Rivers have burst banks. At least 200 people have died. More than 190,000 people have been displaced. And now, they’re expecting a cyclone.

Wicklife told me that while March to May is commonly their “long rain” rainy season, when work and school completely stops because of the rain, this year, the impact is literally deadly. The reason for the intense rainfall is apparently due to climate change and swinging sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean, combined with bone dry ground that can’t absorb the water quickly enough.

Wicklife is most assuredly praying that the rain will stop.

In other areas, people are begging for rain. East Africa faces its worst drought in 40 years, with over 1.4 million people displaced by drought in Somalia alone. Famine, malnutrition, diseases, wildfires, exacerbating conflict, flash flooding – they are all consequences of not enough rain.  

Rain, and lack of rain, is causing so much destruction, so much death.

I had literally just complained about the rain in Wales as Wicklife told me about the flooding in Kenya. I felt like slapping my own wrist.

My experience of hating excess rain is very real. The impact of seemingly constant rainfall affects me and community. But despite the rain, I still have clean water, food, housing, education, work. And I have life. When so many others don’t.

I will definitely still moan about the rain in Wales, but at the same time, I’ll recall that this rain is an inconvenience, sometimes a major one, for most (other than perhaps farmers or those on low-ground levels), not a matter a life and death.

Plus, on a lighter note, the rain really does mean we have one of the lushest, most beautiful countries in the world. And when the sun finally comes out, I have never seen a group of people so excited, so keen, to be outside.

Come on Mr Sun, Mr Golden Sun, please shine down on me.