Delubia deluge

February 16, 2008

“La lluvia”, he whispered, in a bit of a frantic tone. I was standing in the sun with a banana in my hand and wondered why he was worried about rain. That’s when I realized that what I thought was the sound of wind was actually a wall of rain advancing very quickly toward’s us. Nature lives by extremes in the jungle. There is no half way about it. Rain here is actually called a “delubia”, a deluge of falling water rockets. There is no gentle sprinkle or hours of fine mist before full on rain is worked up to. No, you can be sweltering in the sun and then completely drenched in a delubia in 5 seconds flat. So then began the dash for the nearest shelter. I had my umbrella, but that didn’t really matter because a delubia goes right through the umbrealla. It does give you a little window though and I had about 5 minutes before I was soaking wet. So there I was running in the rain, completely drenched, with an umbrella in one hand and a banana in the other. I couldn’t remember ever running in the rain with a banana before and I felt just a little bit silly.

The banana had been given to me by the last patient I had seen with the Chaplain Manuel. I had spent half the morning traveling by bus and taxi with Manuel as I attended to the physical needs of recently discharged patients and Manuel attended to the spiritual. It took me a couple hours before I realized that Manuel was the same man I had helped push his tractor out of the mud a few weeks past. Apparently Manuel has two jobs. Monday through Thursday he is a gardner, and on Fridays he is a Chaplain.

Delubia. It just rolls off the tongue. Delubia, delubia, delubia. I think it is my new favorite word