When the Rains Don't Come

Maria's kitchen

As I was tutoring my friend Maria in English yesterday, rain began to spatter on the tin roof above us and Maria looked up at me with this half-crazed look. “It's raining,” she said.

My first thought was how Maria would have to walk two miles along a steep dirt road in the rain to get back to her house. “Do you have an umbrella?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “But it doesn't matter.” By this time I realized that she was smiling.

Maria explained that for her family's subsistence, it is absolutely crucial that it rains right now. We are already almost three months into the normal six-month rainy season without any of the regular heavy rains that are typical of this time of year, and it takes at least three months for beans to grow. Maria's husband Donald gave up waiting for the rains to come and went ahead and planted their beans; now all they need is the rain to make them grow.

Many families like Maria's function on a partly self-sufficient diet. As a primary school teacher, Maria earns hardly any money. So instead of spending all of that money on food, they grow beans and onions to eat so that they can use Maria's salary instead on electricity and new clothes and bus fares. This system works well as long as it rains.

Maria's son Hansel

As it is now, Maria says that they have 100 pounds of beans left over from last year – enough to feed her husband, three kids, and mother-in-law for another three months. She says that she has begun to tell her kids (who are ages 4, 8, and 13) that they need to eat less.

For me, hearing this was a bit of an awakening. I am a frugal person, but I have never had to even consider rationing how much food I eat because there just wasn't enough. And yet, this is happening all around me here in San Nicolas. One year of meager rain is all it takes to bring these families to the brink of starvation.

Maria's daughter Helen

In shock at this realization, I flailed for a solution. “Are there any other sources of water available to replace the rain?” I asked Maria. She told me that they get all of their drinking, dish-doing, and laundry water from a natural spring. They have begun siphoning off a bit of that water for the fields – which means that they need to conserve their water for other uses – but it's still not enough.

“But surely the government can do something, if so many Nicaraguans are so close to famine?” I asked. The problem with that, Maria told me, is that actually not that many Nicaraguans are in this same dilemma. Because lately there have been such unusually strong winds for this time of year, the rain is being blown to other parts of the country. So departments like Matagalpa and the Region Autonoma Atlanticas are getting plenty of rain and having no trouble with their beans. Because it's a more local problem, then, it's a much smaller issue for the government as a whole.

By the time this conversation ended, the rain had slowed to a patter and then stopped. Unfortunately, fifteen minutes of rain wasn't enough to resolve Maria's worries. We will see what happens in the next weeks. But if the rain doesn't come, lots of hardworking families like Maria's – who have done absolutely everything right – will be devastatingly affected in the year to come by environmental changes that are completely out of their control.