Thunderstorm

It's Sunday afternoon. A thunderstorm has just washed through Beni. The sounds of the neighborhood have sprung back to life. Motos roar along the roads. Roosters rename the day. Songbirds renew their chirping. From the surrounding compounds I hear the voices of women and children punctuated by the clanging of aluminum pans as they tend to cooking and washing.

I love the thunderstorms here. Swaths of black clouds gather from across the sky, and convene in ever-expanding battalions of black and grey. The clouds are giants of grace and power. The remind me of Tolkien’s Ents.

Then suddenly, the clouds break wide open and spill torrents of water that race across rooftops and roads.