Mathangwane's "fallen cloud": A bad omen or lucky charm?

The jury is still out in the usually sleepy village of Mathangwane, outside Francistown, where multitudes gathered last Friday to see a ‘cloud’ that had literally fallen from the sky the previous day.

Villagers got the shock of their lives when, in addition to the rainfall, tonnes of hail were found covering the width of a stream up to its banks. Several trees in the vicinity had their branches battered apparently by the ‘cargo’ of hail from the heavens which also killed some donkeys and goats at the scene.

Although there is disagreement on whether the hail came down as a single unit constituting the cloud or whether the hail repeatedly fell in the same place resulting in the heap of the ice-cold stones, all are in agreement that, whatever happened was most unusual. “This certainly is not normal. What kind of hail is this,” asked a shocked resident David Muchingura.

Even 86 year old Albert Kgwarae had never heard nor seen anything like it. “I do not know what this is. It is God himself visiting us. This is certainly a sign of something,” he said. “This is a sign of something bad that is going to happen,” said a media unfriendly lady with a crestfallen demeanour. A spiritually sensitive young man challenged those who doubted the existence of God to rethink their stance because, as far as he was concerned, the falling of that amount of hail on the same place was a sign that God could do wonders.

On Friday when The Midweek Sun team arrived at the scene, vehicles from both the direction of Francistown and Maun were parked along the A3 Road. Dozens of people hurriedly disembarked from buses, kombis and private cars to join the villagers on foot as everybody wanted to see and touch the ‘cloud’.

Following a hailstorm that was felt in many places of the country the previous afternoon, Besides taking photos with their smart phones, some did not waste time but threw the beads of hail into their mouths eliciting disapproval from the more reserved.

A number of onlookers could not help pick the hailstones from the close to 1 metre high heap that covered about 20x10 metres of land. Others saw the heap of hail as a bad omen.