Ok, I have decided to share my secret list of ingredients for making rain with you 🙂 .

When we wish to manifest a different reality in our lives, we must firstly set a clear intention. Then we need to put the energy closest linked to that state into a creative act – such as art, music, dance or a ritual. Add a huge bucket of trust and stir in hands-full of patience. Regularly add generous amounts of gratitude and sprinkle with as much fun and creativity as you can find. Decorate with light-heartedness and celebration.

As you might have guessed, this is an update on my last post “Waiting for rain” and you are probably curious to hear if my little rainmaker was successful.

After I made my ‘little rainmaker’ and writing about it in my last post, nothing much happened for a few days. And I started to get doubts. Maybe the rainmaker was too small? Or maybe the stone which I selected, was wrong – after all, it came from the Namib desert, a place which seldom sees rain. Maybe it just had forgotten the feeling of rain? So just to be absolutely sure, I decided to remind the stone and myself of the feeling of water, by making it stand in water, and refilling the water every day, saying my thanks to nature.

There was some rain on the 4th of February, but not much. Just enough that I decided to re-draw the cloud image and rain drops on the stone, as the image has been washed away a little bit. Through doing so, I reaffirmed my gratitude for every little drop of rain that we are getting.

All the time I regularly thought about our believes and superstitions surrounding rain. As kids we were told that eating up your food would allow it to rain and I still say that to friends when they are over for dinner. In Namibia we also say that you must not run to take down the washing from the line, when the first drops fall, as this will surely chase away the rain…

So when the first drops appeared  I rather took a picture of my washing and the drops, happy about every little bit of moisture and not worry about it getting wet.  Quietly celebrating each one of the few drops which our sky managed to squeeze out of the promising clouds. Even if once again, the drops stopped coming soon after they started… (Note to self: the washing believe does not seem to hold water in either a literal or figurative way. 😉 )

Raindrops on my washing

First raindrops on the new rainmaker (7 Feb)

On my birthday, the 7th of February, maybe as a special birthday gift, we had the first real rain. (Another note to self: it really takes a lot of patience, trust and many little prayers of thanks to get it to rain, but eventually it will rain.)

Ok, I acknowledge that I hoped the little rainmaker would bring lots of rain within two or three days. But maybe I just need more practice and more faith. And at least making and nurturing the little rainmaker  gave me a sense of being proactive and positive in a time, when many people are starting to be talking about the imminent drought that we might be facing this year with a doomsday face and spreading the fear.

I learned that even if we can (and should be able to) influence reality with the right intentions and actions  a little bit nature still has a way of following its own rhythms, but it might also be reminding us of some valuable lessons. We have been blessed with several really good rainy seasons and we have started to take water for granted again. We have wasted water, used it without being conscious about our actions or without remembering how very blessed we are and saying thanks.

And even if my little rainmaker has not yet brought Namibia or my garden the wonderful rains which I hoped for, I still have faith that we will also survive this year and this season.And that the rain might still come…

Last, but not least the little rainmaker provided me with regular joy watching the wild animals coming to drink from my installation. In the very first picture is a wild yellow mongoose and below is a red-eyed bird. I do not know the scientific name of the bird, but I happen to know this bird personally, as I had the pleasure to share its life for the past few months. She and her husband have nested in my garden and I could watch them raise their young chick, teaching it to fly and celebrate life.

Red-eyed bird drinking from the rainmaker installation