Rain, Dogs and Cats

Today is the third in a sequence of damp, relatively cool days here in Maputo. At night we are sleeping with a comforter, the breeze coming in the bedroom window finally refreshing instead of suffocatingly hot, as has been the tendency for the past 5 months. We've even had a couple of short but pounding rainstorms, a sure sign that the seasons are changing.

They say that Mozambicans are more afraid of rain and dogs than they are of cars. I laughed the first time I heard someone make this observation back in Chimoio on a particularly rainy day, thinking he was just trying to make small talk. Now, after multiple opportunities to see how Mozambicans tend to react to water from the sky (Run madly for cover as if the drops were composed of battery acid), dogs (Freeze immediatly in place and look down, preferably with your hands over your face. If you can't see the dog, it can't see you and therefore won't attack), and cars (No problem. A several-ton hunk of metal speeding recklessly down the highway is no cause for concern. Feel free to waltz out into traffic with your children in tow, ride your bike across several lanes without looking, or take your herd of goats out for a stroll fully occupying the tarmac), I now understand the root of the saying and am 100% in agreement.

I've discovered in recent months that, along with dogs and rain, many Mozambicans are also afraid of cats. The reaction is much the same as it is for dogs - stop in your tracks and cover your face with your hands. I will never forget the plumber who came over to fix our bathroom sink and freaked out about the boys. When he saw Pria lounging on top of our dining table, her yellow eyes staring back at him, he collapsed onto the sofa as if his knees had given out from underneath him and proptly shielded his eyes with his hands. Somehow the poor plumber managed to stutter to Rico in a hushed voice, "O s-s-s-ehnhor gosta de g-g-g-ato p-p-preto?" You like black cats? He said it as if we had a box full of cobras or some other equally dangerous beast in the middle of the living room. Thanks to the plumber, "Gato Preto" has become our new favorite nickname for Pria, said in a throaty voice and reserved especially for those occasions when she behaves not like a sweet housecat, but as if the devil itself had posessed her.

I wonder what Mozambicans would think of our expression in English, "It's raining cats and dogs." I'd imagine that the idea of not just water but cats and dogs falling from the sky must be, for the locals, a pretty close approximation of armageddon.