Blame it on the Rain...

So last week, I had a head cold. Nothing serious. Just enough to zap my energy and make me want to sleep all day. A little bit of a fever. Constant sneezing. You know the kind.  When my neighbors would come by, for whatever reason, they’d ask me how I was feeling. I’d let them know and their response was always the same.  “It’s the state of the weather.” Oh. Silly me, I thought maybe I had picked it up on the plane. You know, a result of germs perhaps?

It’s their standard answer for everything. Regardless of what the weather actually is, it’s the reason for boils. For fevers. For malaria. For colds. For upset stomachs. For cuts on your leg. For burns. For whatever may be ailing you, blame it on the weather.

One day during rainy season, my neighbor came by, her son was sick. I asked what was wrong. She said he’d been vomiting and it was yellow. Yet another detail they deem important. It doesn’t seem to be an issue if the vomit is any other color, but if it’s yellow, you’d better watch out.  I told her I was sorry and I hoped he’d get better quickly.  She replied, “yeah, well, you know, it’s the state of the weather.” Ok.

Another day, during dry season, another neighbor came by to tell me about her son who had some sort of sore in his groin area. Right there is too much information for me, but you know, in the interest of relationship-building, I pretended to be interested.  At the conclusion of our conversation, she said, “well, you know it’s the state of the weather.”

Ok, but the weather is a lot different than rainy season…

Just this afternoon, a grandma asked me how I was doing. I told her my tummy was bothering me and I wasn’t sure why.  She told me it was because of the clouds.  I looked up. There weren’t any clouds. How does that work?

I guess they need to blame their sickness on something and the weather doesn’t seem to mind.  At least as far as they can tell.

It reminds me of a story from Madagascar days. We had a fellow worker visiting us and her specialty was AIDS education. We organized a session where she’d be able to share and teach a bit about AIDS.  She had these cool flip-charts with pictures of bad viruses and good viruses. As she gave her presentation about AIDS, I thought, “How cleverly she’s done this. It totally makes sense.”  At the presentation, people asked a few questions and we were done. People seemed grateful and seemed to have understood what she had said. “Seemed” would be the key word there.

A couple of days later, an old man who had been at the presentation saw my team leader.  After a few minutes of small talk, my team leader asked him what he had thought of the AIDS presentation. The old guy answered with great enthusiasm, “It was great! I learned a lot. And now if I ever see that bad guy, I’ll kill it right away.”

Right. You do that old guy.

And next time someone tells me they’re, or someone they know, is sick, I’m just going to bust out in Manilli Vanilli’s “Blame it on the Rain.”  Maybe throw in a dance move or two. I so get this culture…