I’ve never been afraid of thunderstorms. I was quite mesmerised by the sequence of showers, lightning and rain as a child. And when I grew slightly older, and always older than my actual age, I found myself searching for the voice of the God who spoke like roaring thunders in them. All in all tropical storms usually made me feel excited, curious or expectant, but never scared.
The one time I was scared though was during my first ever hailstorm. Retrospect mocks me now as I flashback, with little details that might have put my mind at ease if I had been a little less naïve and a whole lot smarter. It was sometime around my 10th birthday. Some other chains of event indicate that it was before I turned 10, but my childhood memories are highly unreliable so I can’t be certain. I was somewhere in the ballpark of 10 nevertheless. Mother was away from home on one of many trips, presumably to the capital, and I was playing in the compound with my ‘cousin’ (in the most Nigerian sense of the word) and some neighbours. I can’t remember what the game was but it was probably some torturous version of tag or hide & go-seek and I was probably losing and being a sore loser at that.
It suddenly started to rain, no real thunderstorm just a light afternoon shower. I was excited at first, a new dynamic had been added to our playtime. Then as it got a little heavier, I noticed what looked like tiny misshapen blocks of ice. My inner investigator put one straight into my mouth and was amazed that my eyes were not in fact deceiving me. Tiny misshapen blocks of ice where falling from our Makurdi sky!
Now you must understand. We were relatively well travelled within the confines of our country and I had watched a lot of TV. But nothing in my “ballpark of 10” mind could conceive of the notion of tiny misshapen blocks of ice falling from the sky! I somehow failed to connect the dot between cold, fog filled harmattan mornings, pure white snow from Home Alone and this new magical mystery occurring in my little town.
Then my cousin drops the bombshell. The world was coming to an end. In turns out it was a joke in poor taste but I was genuinely freaked out. I even cried! Though admittedly that was not something I struggled with in those days. I don’t know if it was before or after my cousin’s bad joke-though something tells me it was much later-that an aunty incensed the issue further by telling a far-fetched tale of it raining fish in some other place. All I could think of was the basic elementary science that my primary education had thus far armed me with. I knew rain fell as a result of evaporation of water into gas that went up to the clouds, and that evaporation could only happen to liquids. So I couldn’t understand how fish got up there! Perhaps if I had followed that thought through, ice wouldn’t have seemed so far-fetched. But we’ll chuck that one up to the gift of hindsight as well.
When I ran inside to cry, my cousin came to comfort me, still no confessing of course. I have a feeling I was probably the only one not in on the joke. I have a terrible habit of sitting comfortably and aloofly outside the loop. Her consolation fell on deaf ears but not for the reason most think.
I had no real concept of faith, religion, life after death or God. The idea of the world coming to an end had been thrown about in religious gatherings I had been dragged to, but beyond the obvious cease and desist of all existence I wasn’t aware of much else. I prayed that day because I sort of knew that was what ought to be done, not because I understood anything. My prayer was for my mother. It wasn’t for God to halt the inevitable, merely to put it on hold till I saw my mother one last time. I can admit now that I wasn’t at ease till she got home. I think I even fell sick, something else I had quite the talent for in my childhood.
That one practical joke was my first encounter with the possibility of nothingness. Our old friend retrospect returns and I realise how that experience helped me accept God about 3 or 4 years later. I had gone from expecting oblivion to being promised an eternity of love and unity. It was a much easier choice than most would imagine. For all my solitude I never liked the idea of complete oblivion.
freshlybakdthoughts 