There are places in the world who need rain – you should be grateful, you should feel blessed, writes Ruta Mave.

“I can’t stand the rain on my window pane,” sung Tina Turner bringing back sweet memories of sun? I can’t stand the rain on my window pane despite it being a blessing from God – so we are told. The silver lining positivity Pollyanna’s in the world say rain is constant and melodic, it is calming and soothing and it is used in meditation tracks to affect the nerves’ sympathetic system to lull and relax you into a deep sleep.

Oh, give me a break it’s been 50 days of grey, the weather app said it would rain and it did. Then it said it wouldn’t rain and it did – what is the point of having all this technology of thermometers, anemometers, barometers, buckets full of water, if we can’t get it right. My nana’s knees had more accuracy than some of these meteorologists. Funny how they got such a fancy name when we don’t have meteors hitting the planet on a daily basis. Apparently, it means things high up in the sky – like rain.

We live on a tropical island; it is green for a reason – rain. In the desert it is orange because they have sun and no rain, simple. The Pollyanna life coaches are smoothing out the disgruntled who are trying to get their clothes washed and dried, the mothers with kids on school holidays confined inside like caged animals and the tourists who paid lots of money to experience this wonderful phenomenon. They say things like “you know there are places in the world who need rain, you should be grateful, you should feel blessed”. Well, you know what? I’m not feeling it right now, I want to house swap to somewhere warm like Italy.

Of course, the weather app says it will be sunny all this week, that is because school goes back today, and the hundreds of moisture sensitive costumes for Te Maeva Nui have already been worn in full splendor on display and will now be packed away and tourists are heading home wondering where the pictures of the brochures showing warm sandy beaches and blue lagoons were taken or was it all a lie? 

There needs to be an addition to the arrival card that tourists can tick saying they want fine weather during their stay. I like to ask tourists if they saw the question on their arrival card and if they say ‘no’ and they didn’t check it then that is my reasoning for their wet trip because it can’t be our fault, right? I mean what is Tourism thinking when they advertise and promote us to the Europeans to travel here during their summer time – which is having a heatwave at the moment.       It’s our winter and they are told come to the islands it is mild, temperate, its winter but it is the dry season. Aah yeah right.

If only there was such a thing as climate change, we could blame that, but one man has managed to destabilise that platform to being fake news that no one accepts it as a real thing. Except of course our government who are using every possible platform and excuse to crowd the founders of the green climate change funding to give it to us.

Back in the day our ancestors used the natural elements to predict the weather. They watched the patterns formed by sun, moon, stars and cloud formations, bird migrations and sea currents. Animals play their part as well. Ants will hole up and migrate to higher ground and worms will come out of their burrows before rain. Dogs and cats have high sensitivity to smelling and hearing storms and rain coming. The smell of rain coming is called petrichor, it was termed by some Australian scientists in 1964 and it comes from the Greek word for stone and the golden fluid of the immortals.

Chickens will fly into the trees to sleep at night but not when a big storm is coming. Banana plants sing and fruit trees have early and a highly abundant amount of produce prior to cyclone season predicting the approach of one.

The reason nana’s knees played up prior to rain or storms is due to the barometric pressure lowering and causing the fluid in her joints to expand – 90 per cent of our body is fluid. This increase in pressure on the nerves and tissues in her knees would cause the discomfort that she recognised would come before every rain.

Whatever the weather I am sure glad when it comes like this and it does so often these days. I’m thankful to my presence of mind to put my money into the roof over mine and my family’s head than into a big ego truck on HP sitting outside in the rain.