It’s been a hard winter in the south this year. Cold and dry. And due to COVID, work has been scarce, prices have gone up and tempers are short.

Spring has been in the air for a while. The apricot and a few other trees blossomed early and we emptied the rainwater tanks to give them a start. But tenants demand, neighbors encroach, the City Council hikes rates for ever-diminishing services.

The garden demands attention: recently hatched pigeons compete with snails for my just-planted lettuces. The spring winds begin to suck humid oceanic air from the tropics, then cold winter fronts chase it out. And the rain stays away.

As COVID retreats, economic activity increases. For the first time in two years, traffic crowds streets where trees begin to bud. And suddenly our main translation and language service clients awake. First a few letters regarding new appointments, then new newsletters. An urgent document regarding COVID measures, a few updates and reports. Then a flood of updates on security- and other procedures.

A typical Highveld lightning storm, all noise and no rain, sends my dog scurrying to safety behind the washing machine and trips the ill-maintained power system. We struggle on with generator power for two days. Then my computer stops working. The manufacturers cry ‘vintage machine,’ online diagnostics are less charitable, talking of obsolete equipment.

I fall back to an even older, much simpler and more pleasant computer just as an urgent request comes in to edit a thesis. A long weekend becomes a session of eleven-hour days struggling with formatting crises caused by old software and arguments about engineering jargon. And the wind turns east.

The edited thesis goes off, the client is happy. The mine agrees on some points but on others they want us to just accept all changes and translate, please, an audit is looming. And the humidity rolls in from the sea.

The fiddler, Jan Konterdans, sang in the great desert of the dance of our sister, the dance of the rain. He sang of her spreading her gray cloak with both arms, of the small animals whispering, the great antelopes bending down to see her tracks on the sand.

The first rains of spring came last night. The trees and plants drink life from the earth. Animals spread their nostrils and join the dance of spring, the dance of procreation.

Politics fade, pandemics become less important. Engineers are forgotten, work fades away as we celebrate the dance of our sister, the dance of the rain, the dance of hope.