Request the Rain
The familiar rains that spanned December
were absent altogether.
fields grew blonde and hard.
Cost of corn crept
until it was a question of shoes or school.
Girls the first
to go. Balance blue buckets
at dawn and dusk
over that dusty plain.
Against this drought, we dig.
Plant
a hundred tiny trees.
Whisper to the tender shoots
and pray
as we pour precious
water over fragile roots. Fence with thorns.
Then we raise up dirty hands
and ask this fragile green to spread
across the hills,
over highlands,
higher,
higher,
until the trees can stretch their arms
meet the sky
and request the rain on our behalf.
My family plants trees together every year, or whenever one of our kids carries home a seedling with dirt dripping off the roots. Papayas, guavas, yellow-bark acacias; local species with names like Madalay, Tope-Tope.
We plant them in recycled tires or dig holes along the hillside. Hem the edges of our fields and fill in gaps along the drive.
Our dwarf lemons look so funny; fruit hangs like heavy earrings, threatening to bend her fragile branches.
Pomegranates are my favorite; buds like bright garnet, grow into fruit that resembles jewels strung between glossy leaves.
Six years ago, we accidentally planted avocados by tossing pits in the compost pile. They grew, and this week we made guacamole with avocados the size of softballs.
But not all our endeavors are so lucky. The apple trees were trampled, and my precious plumerias, chewed up by the dogs.
Still, we plant.
The first year I moved here, there was a terrible drought. Not just dry, but desperate. Failing fields directly affected subsistence farmers: if you can’t grow enough to feed your family…then you cannot feed your family.
That summer, we planted fifty trees along the hills around our home which faces the Ngorongoro Highlands.
Don’t call me a defeatist - but only twenty of those fifty seedings survived.
Trees are mighty things: they keep the seasons, maintain cycles of rain, act as aquifier rechargers. Their roots reach deep and hold the earth, prevent it from being swept away during a monsoon…but only if they can survive the first year of planting.
America is turning 250 this year. Tanzania has been an independent nation for a little more than six decades. Compare that to Lerai Forest, which sits along the floor of Ngorongoro Crater, part of an ecosystem estimated to be something like 2 million years ancient.
Older than anything I can imagine.
At least eight times this week, I wondered if it might be the end of the world. If the newest calamity, the most recent injustice, would be the final tipping point. The news doesn’t feel like it’s just chasing down the ‘next big story’ anymore; it really does seem like things are spontaneously combusting. I wonder what kind of future will be left for my kids.
I wonder if most of my efforts are futile: trying to keep up with the laundry, recycling paper and plastics, teaching my children not to litter.
But I do not doubt the trees we’ve planted - even if half of them have died. I look out my kitchen window at the flourish of green that invites sunbirds and Scops owls; breathe in the sweet scent of eucalyptus from the giants that shade our patio, and I know that I’ve contributed to something that will outlast me.
I might get a hundred years. Maybe. But trees get centuries, at minimum.
Don’t call me a defeatist. There’s a positive spin, I swear: what really matters is not whatever we can grab hold of in our desperately short lives; it’s the things that live on after us.
The trees we planted.
Whatever we took time to water or protect from greedy goats.
Plants that provide something tangible for the next generation - even if their greatest task is hidden in the roots, holding tight the soil, preventing it from being washed away.
My challenge for readers is this: plant something this week.
If it can’t be a physical tree, at least let it be good.