Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in Yahweh, your God for he gives you the former rain in just measure, and he causes the rain to come down for you, the former rain and the latter rain, as before.

Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.

Gado, a renowned cartoonist for one of Kenya s leading newspapers, summed it up best, depicting a jubilant Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki leading a pack of bureaucrats and dogs in suits to Turkana to announce to the people, Rejoice!

Or the continent can reach back to Giuseppe Verdi, born two hundred years ago, whose penultimate, and probably greatest, operatic achievement starts on the coast of Cyprus with a storm of fantastic violence and the opening words of its hero, Otello Esultate, rejoice!