[Jacob-list] Newbie questions/welcome/rite of passage in shepherding

[Susan Nielsen]

On Sun, 1 Sep 2002, fayg wrote:

> Ow, 3.5 inchs ... All I did was pray to Jesus for rain and he delivered ...

It ain't only Jesus delivers.
I share the following, from The International News, from last month:
---
   Female farmers get naked to appease rain god

   August 15 2002 at 01:05PM
                   Quickwire

   Kathmandu - Some 200 women in Nepal who ploughed their fields naked in
   a desperate attempt to bring rain to their drought-stricken region
   were rewarded as the monsoon began shortly afterwards, a report said
   on Thursday.

   The women had last week locked their husbands inside their houses and
   then stripped off to till their fields at midnight in a bid to appease
   the Hindu god of rain, Indra.  The superstitious women were trying to
   bring showers to the far western Banke district, where the monsoon had
   failed to materialise and farmers had been unable to plant rice.
   Naked farming was not the only ritual performed by the locals. They
   also "married" male and female frogs and staged naked dances - all
   thought to provoke divine intervention to end dry spells.

   Days after the naked ploughing, it began raining in western parts of
   the country and it seemed the rain god Indra was finally appeased, the
   Nepali-language daily Nepal Samacharpatra said. Local official Rajesh
   Kumar Mahato from the neighbouring Dhangadhi district told the newspaper
   that some places in the region had 197 millimetres of rainfall at the
   weekend. The ritual had worked so well that excessive rainfall caused
   roads to become flooded. Meteorology Department officials forecast the
   rain would continue for a few more days, the newspaper said.

   Some 422 people have died in Nepal from flooding and landslides during
   this monsoon season, according to the International Federation of Red
   Cross and Red Crescent Societies. - Sapa-AFP