And the Rains Came Tumbling Down

 And the Rains Came Tumbling Down 

(A Myth From Papua New Guinea)

'What we need are houses,' said Kikori. 

'What's one of those?' said Fly (since houses had not yet been invented). 

'Somewhere to shelter from wind and sun and rain other than this cave, I mean, with its spiders.' 

Fly pretended to be unimpressed, but liked the idea. Kikori suggested they build a house together, but Fly had ideas of his own about building the very first house and he was sure they were the best. 

Kikori built a wood frame, then wove the leaves of the rei plant into five glossy waterproof mats: one for a roof and four for the walls. It was laborious, painful work. The sharp leaves cut his hands and irritated his skin, but the finished house was so fine that his family broke into spontaneous clapping.

Not Fly. He had long since finished his house and returned to watch, with much shaking of his head and carping. 'How long you took! Look at your hands. Makes me itch just to think. And it's green. Do you seriously think people want to live in green houses?' 

'How did you make yours, then?' said Kikori patiently. 

Kikori examined Fly's house, his head on one side then on the other. Fly's framework of branches had been daubed all over with mud. The mud had dried into clay, and now the hut crouched on the ground like a collapsed beast, boney with protruding sticks. 

'What happens when it rains?' said Kikori.

At that moment, a clap of thunder sent them both darting back to their huts, mustering their wives and children. The monsoon broke as if the green sky had split, and the rains came, as they come every year to Papua New Guinea. Every view was lost from sight behind a curtain of rain. Every sound was silenced by the deafening hiss of the downpour. 

Inside Kikori's house, he and his family sat listening to the thunderous rattle of water on rei. But the interwoven leaves threw off the rain as surely as a tortoise's shell, and they stayed warm and dry. They sang songs and planned which crops to plant in the sodden earth. 

Fly, too, sat with his family inside his new house. The rain ran down its brown sides, and gradually the clay walls turned back to mud around them. The mud oozed and trickled. It slopped down like cow pats on to Fly and his wife and children, smothering them from head to foot in brown slurry.

But not for long. Soon so much icy rain was pouring through the roof that they were washed quite clean again. The children's teeth chattered, his wife moaned gently to herself, ground her teeth and wrung out her hair. When the rain slackened briefly, she went out with a panga and cut a great pile of rei leaves, dropping them down at the door. 

'When you've made a house like Kikori's,' she said, 'I and the little ones will come and share it with you. In the meantime, we're going back to the cave.' 

Fly, as he sat ankle-deep in mud, contemplated the unfairness of life and whether he ought to invent dry rain. 

Source

Golden Myths and Legends of the Wold

Geraldine McCaughrean

1999

Pages: 169-170