Enjoyment and Confusion

Blog number two of the day!

Grace Ogot’s The Rain Came is the story of a village that has not had a plentiful rain supply. The lack of rain is causing hunger and suffering. The only way for the town to get rain is if the chief’s daughter, Oganda, sacrifices herself to a sea monster.

I really enjoyed reading this story up to a point. I liked the beginning because of the vivid picture the descriptions painted with statements like “everyone moved aimlessly and fussed in the year without doing any work.” I also like the description of how chief Labong’o acts. He is supposed to be brave because he is the chief, but his own daughter is set to be sacrificed. With this burden on his shoulders, he cannot help but weep, and question what to do. I like this description of him because, to me, it gives him more depth. In some other stories, the chief fathers might just say that it is their daughter's fate and she must carry it out. In this story, however, Labong’o truly cares about his daughter, and this is visible his description.

The story continues on to describe Oganda’s actions whilst the family is discussing her fate. When I was reading the story, I started to view the scene through Oganda’s eyes at this point. I could see that she probably guessed her family was talking about her marriage because they excluded her from the discussion, and how when she heard the people singing that she must die, she was upset and scared. I liked the story at this point because I was able to get into the character's head and see the scene through their eyes.

The last thing in the story that made me enjoy it was the description of the start of Oganda’s departure. The picture is painted so vividly. I was able to see the villagers watching her and her mother hugging her. I also really liked the use of her song. Having the specific words to her song to read helped to visualize the picture that much more. The author could have just as easily said “Oganda began to sing a song to keep herself company,” but this would not have given any real meaning to the point of the song.

The end of the story, however, I did not like as much. For some reason, it bothers me that Osinda comes and saves Oganda. I feel like it does not entirely make sense. We know from the story that Osinda is the man that Oganda really would like to marry, but he is not really mentioned that much. I think that because of this, it seems random that he just appears out of nowhere and saves Oganda. In addition to thinking Osina’s appearance is random, the very ending does not make much sense to me. He saves her, and takes her to the water. Then, all of a sudden, it just starts to rain. Oganda’s fate was to die so that her village could receive rain. The ending to this story just leaves me asking the question why did it begin to rain if she did not die?