The Last Rain: A Farmer’s Cry for the Earth

Theastreenheillage

There used to be trees everywhere in our village. Tall ones, short ones, ones with fruits, ones that hummed with bees. We didn’t think much of them back then—they were just there. Like the sky. Like breath.

But slowly, over the years, they started to disappear. One by one. We cut them down when the rains failed, or when the nights grew too cold, or when our hunger became louder than our conscience. Some of us felt guilty. Others didn’t have time for guilt. Survival has a way of making your world smaller.

And then, there was one tree left.

We called her Iya.

It means mother.

She stood near the river’s edge, tall and wide, with roots that reached deep and arms that stretched far. Our grandparents told stories about her. Said she’d been there before any of us were born. Said she used to shelter lovers, birds, children with secrets. Said the elders once tied wishes to her bark.

We believed them. Or at least, we wanted to.

When the hard winter came, everything changed.

That year, the cold didn’t just arrive—it crashed into us. The wind tore through the village like it had teeth. Our walls rattled. The water turned to ice in our bowls. The babies couldn’t sleep. The old ones stopped talking. Even the dogs curled into tight, silent balls.

There was no more firewood.

We had burned everything—chairs, broken beds, fence posts, even the school signboard. There was nothing left to burn but Iya.

Nobody said it at first. We all looked at her, then looked away, like we were ashamed to even think it. But the cold kept biting, and hunger makes people say things they wouldn’t dare in daylight.

So someone finally said it.

“We could cut the tree.”

The words dropped like a stone. People went quiet. Even the wind seemed to pause, as if waiting for our answer.

We argued for days. The elders sat in the meeting hut, their voices low, their faces tired. Uncle Ibrahim, who was nearly 90, shook his head and said, “If we cut her down, we lose more than wood. That tree has been standing since before I had teeth.”

But Musa—young, angry, grieving—stood up and said, “What good is a tree to a dead child?”

His little boy had been sick for days. Cold had wrapped itself around his bones like a curse. Musa wasn’t just speaking for himself. He was speaking for all of us.

And so we voted.

It was close. Too close. But in the end, survival won. It always does.

On the morning we were to cut Iya down, the village gathered in silence. No songs. No prayers. Just cold breath and guilt.

No one wanted to swing the axe. No one wanted to be the one to kill a mother.

But Musa stepped forward.

He didn’t speak. Just gripped the axe with both hands. He looked at the tree for a long time before he struck.

The sound echoed. Loud. Sharp. Final.

Children flinched. Some cried. The rest just stared.

Each blow was slower than the last. It was as if the tree was resisting—not with strength, but with memory. With meaning. With every crack of bark, something inside us cracked too.

And then she fell.

Not fast. Not all at once. But slowly, like she was saying goodbye.

That night, there was fire.

We burned the branches first. Then the trunk. The flames roared, and for the first time in weeks, we felt warm. Children laughed again. The sick breathed easier. Musa’s son even smiled.

We thought maybe we’d done the right thing. Or at least, something necessary.

But the next morning, Ibrahim sat by the empty patch where the tree had stood. He just kept staring at the bare earth. When I passed him, he said something I still think about.

“It’s strange,” he said. “It’s warmer, but it feels colder.”

The warmth didn’t last long.

The logs burned fast. Within days, the fire was gone. And with it, so was the little bit of hope we’d borrowed.

The cold returned, harsher now. As if punishing us for what we’d done.

The wind howled through the village like it had found a new path—straight through where the tree once stood. The soil around her roots cracked. The river dried up even more. Birds stopped coming. We started coughing again.

And slowly, people started leaving.

Some went to the city. Others joined relatives far away. A few stayed, mostly the old ones, and those too tired to run.

Musa buried his son a few weeks later. A pile of stones marked the grave.

One day, a young man came to our village. Said he was studying climate change. Said he wanted to hear our story. We told him everything. Not because we wanted to, but because maybe someone needed to remember.

Before he left, he stood on the empty patch and scribbled something in his notebook.

“This is where the last tree fell,” he wrote.

“Not just from an axe, but from fear.

From the silence of a warming world.

From too little, too late.”

Years later, someone sent us an article. There was a photo of Iya’s stump, now cracked and covered in weeds. The piece talked about “climate trauma” and “resource desperation” and other words we don’t use here. But all I could think was—

We didn’t just lose a tree.

We lost a mother.

We lost a part of ourselves.

And we’ll carry that grief longer than any winter.