When the Rain Would Not Stop Falling

By “Awake!” correspondent in Madagascar

IN TROPICAL Madagascar there are only two seasons: wet and dry. Since the wet season runs from November through March, nobody was surprised in December 1981 when it started to rain. The farmers were relieved. They needed the rain for their rice fields.

However, the farmers’ smiles turned to worried frowns as the rains kept falling. In Antananarivo, the capital, it rained day and night for three weeks. And it was not normal rain. On one afternoon, after just 10 minutes of exceptionally heavy downpour, several areas of the city were cut off from one another by floods. As the rains kept coming, the rivers began to rise. This rainy season was becoming ominous and threatening. What was happening?

Madagascar was being affected by cyclones, violent windstorms not uncommon in the Indian Ocean where Madagascar is situated. Cyclones bring much of the rain that the rice farmers fervently hope for each year. But that year three powerful cyclones swept past, one after the other, dumping incredible amounts of water on the island. The situation was made worse by the breakdown of the ancient dike system, designed to hold the rivers within bounds during high water. The soil of the dikes was swept away, and water rushed out of the river into the city and onto the farmlands.

As the days went by, the rains kept coming. By the beginning of February, flood-related damage was very serious. Many crops were lost. Fields, plantations, houses and roads disappeared under the spreading floodwaters. In the capital the clay walls of many houses, in constant contact with water, softened and collapsed, ultimately leaving 71,000 in Antananarivo without homes. They were accommodated in schools, social centers, hospitals and churches, until they could go back to their houses​—or build new ones.

The higher part of the city, built on hills, was not flooded. But still there was danger. The rain eroded the soil and washed away retaining walls, resulting in landslides. Also, the roads throughout the island suffered. It was hard to imagine that they had once been paved. And since the rain was not expected to stop before the end of March, the authorities did not bother to repair them. So automobile drivers had to be skillful at avoiding huge potholes, and pedestrians had to be alert to avoid being soaked in muddy water splashed up by passing vehicles.

Finally, toward the end of March, the rain eased off. Soon, sunny, tropical weather returned, and it was difficult to imagine that it had been raining​—until stock was taken of the damage. Ninety-three persons had died in the floods. Nine hundred buildings had been destroyed in Antananarivo alone, and more than a thousand in the east coast city of Toamasina. The total homeless in the whole country was 117,000, out of a population of only 9,000,000. And the farmers lost their harvest.

It will take time for the inhabitants of Madagascar to forget the experience. Some families still grieve for their dead. Many others did not have a roof over their heads for months. Farmers had to wait another year for a harvest​—hoping that the rains would be more manageable in the future.

It would make life happier for most of us if we could be sure that disasters such as the one that hit Madagascar would never happen again. As it happens, the Bible tells us that soon the time is coming when we will have that confidence. (Isaiah 11:9; 65:21, 22; Micah 4:4) Sincere Christians in Madagascar are busy sharing this good news with the inhabitants of that island as they struggle to recover from the time when the rain would not stop falling.