Africa

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Island Blog – It Is Enough

I am awake, early, before the sun is fully up, and I have slept enough. This day is my last in Africa and there is much to do. First off, I must needs park the panics, those fussy itchy thoughts as spikey as porcupines, the ones that demand an active hands-on riffle through and a smart shove into perspective. Will my hold luggage weigh too much? Should I find a tote bag for my hand luggage? How many underlayers should I have ready and about me for my arrival into a 30 degree temperature drop? What about liquids and such, which do I pack and which do I have ready for inspection in a clear plastic bag? And there are many more such flapdoodles to un-flap about, all easily sorted. I clear my mind of the swirling chaos, remind myself to inhabit the present moment and make coffee. I sit outside on the stoep and watch the sky, the rising of the sun, a warm pink backlight for a silhouette of trees. Birds call out, sounds I will not hear back on the island, African birds, coloured up like rainbows and speaking a language I don’t understand. A flash of electric blue, a wide span of ruby tail feathers, a butter yellow head, they cut the sky in two, these glorious creatures, an imprint on my memory.

I will love the change of things as I will remember the colours of Africa. Returning home to the island with its skinny roads and warm people almost happens without me. I step on a plane, three in fact, although not all at the same time, take my seat and up I go to cut other skies in two, many skies and one sky, crossing over continents and oceans, countries, deserts, mountains and rivers. A magical thought indeed. Someone might look up to watch the metal bird, heavy laden with precious cargo and, hopefully, my un-heavy hold luggage, as sunlight flashes off its belly, a pink contrail weaving a cloudline. As I doze or eat or read way up in the sky, life continues way down there, families together and apart, discussions on what to do or where to go. Dogs bark away the night or bark it back in again. Meals are prepared, lists are made, fights are fought, losses are grieved and new life is welcomed in. So much life everywhere, so much living to be lived.

For now, for today, I will take in every moment. I will pack, unpack and repack. This is irritating but a part of the procedure, a sort of resistance to change, to leaving what has become the familiar. However, I know of old that we people can quickly establish a new familiar in a surprisingly short time, so capable are we, so adaptable, despite all those hours of flapdoodle. Imagining the worst always first. Lord knows why we do this but I decide it is a perfectly natural amygdala thing, a sorting service provided by our big brains, processing fearful stimuli, a nudge to encourage intelligent preparation before entering a state of change. From there we decide whether or not the fear is real, such as a truck or a leopard coming at us fast. Needless to say, my fear is a bundle of nonsense – do I have the right clothes, yes, adequate sustenance, yes, the right footwear, mindset, passport etc. The way we can muddle ourselves with fear is daft but we all do it at times. I chuckle at myself. All is well you flappy old woman. Just prepare, calmly, and then set your sights on the moment ahead because you are playing a vital and important part in that moment, and the next, and the next and the next. All you have to do is show up. And I will do just that but not today. Today will be itself and I will be entirely and wholly present as the gift of living lights me up like sunshine. And it is enough.

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Island Blog. Mosquitos don’t fly in Sunshine

Just over ten days to go before I fly back home and I really don’t want to leave. I feel so at home here, with my young, in the heat of certain sunshine, the warmth of African welcomes, all the new people I have met, talked, and laughed with over delicious meals beneath jacaranda boughs all festooned with twinkly lights. I have risen with the sun and sat beside the pool as day gives way to night, a glass of good wine beside me and my skin covered in anti-mosquito spray. I won’t miss them, the mosquitos, silent and determined and always under the table. I have helped with many small tasks and a few big ones, as my young prepare to move house, sanding, oiling, stripping tables, painting walls, and occasionally cooking the evening meal. I have walked in the wildlife estate, thrown ball for the big soft dog in a dog park, laughed at the antics of many cats and shared worrying moments when they came. In short, I have engaged completely with every aspect of life in Africa and the buzz word here is companionship.

Since himself decided to abandon ship, I have felt very alone, even though, towards the end, he was mostly in his own world, I in mine. But he was a presence in the home, a familiar. Navigating the uncharted waters of early widowhood was uncomfortable at times, unsteady, rough too, but I did not capsize, not me. Friends and family are all anyone needs beyond the obvious, like an inside toilet, money for food and bills and four stone walls to surround and protect. Connecting, however, was strange at first. I would say all is well, I am fine, et la la, but inside I felt, at times bereft. I didn’t want himself back, not as he became, but the familiar, when removed in any life, will cause a disturbance in the atmosphere, a fractal cracking of a heart, yes, a split in the ground beneath feet, a stopping of the old turning wheel. Advancing can feel like an impossibility, but very gradually, all this stopping and cracking becomes irritating. The human spirit is tenacious, the inner sprite knows how to itch from within, like a mosquito bite. Now I notice my skin, now I see the red rise of response, now I need to do something, find someone, get off the couch, get living again.

We all take our own time inside this process. There are no rules, no timelines, even if those who have not experienced a fractal cracking decide there are both. Meaning well, but unknowingly feeding the inner judge, these good folk encourage. Get out more, join a club, take up tango, anything to create motion and connection, they might say and to it all I said No thanks. Although I understood that there is a thin line, blue I think, between natural grieving and indulgent collapse, something in me just knew it would take me the time it took me, that eventually my fed would be right up there and I would, naturally, lift myself into a new life. And this I have done. Africa is a healing place for me, mosquitos notwithstanding, and I will miss the soothing balm of easy family companionship. However, and there is always one of those, the flip side of the coin, the other face of the moon etc, is that I have had a long time here. I have inhabited each day and still do. I have engaged with small and ordinary tasks, ready for adventure even if it is just a shopping trip for food, and this because of the surprisingly wonderful serendipities that might just appear in conversation. Familiarity can allow openness, the freedom of precious sharing, whispers from deep in a soul, voiced and floating, beautiful and fragile as butterflies. A new encounter perhaps, a random meet in a shop, smiles swapped, news exchanged that ripple out in a mind for the rest of the day.

I love to live alone, now, but I also know the power and the value of companionship. I will fly back to my much loved island home with a wealth of memories to nourish me. I will recall flash moments and long conversations, reflect on how my time here has affected my young and myself, how we all might feel encouraged to move forward in something previously stuck on ‘hesitate’. Perhaps we have discovered a reset of values, of beliefs, of perception and will, over time, absorb that learning into our lives. Distance is just a plane journey and distance cannot disconnect connection, not in minds, not in spirit for we are linked in ways no force can sever. We change and grow, learn and discover, share and develop because of each other, all of the each others in our lives. Each day offers a gift, the chance to learn something beyond the familiar, something unexplainable, silent, invisible and flowing with light and lift.

I am thankful for each moment left to me in this place, looking forward to what may happen after breakfast, and extremely happy that mosquitos don’t fly in sunshine, whereas I, most certainly, do.

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Island Blog – I am Here, I see This

I stand on the deck above the Switsongo Boutique Guest House (check it out @www.facebook.com/switsongo) in the heart of the wildlife estate. All around me is Bush for hundreds of miles, or it looks like hundreds from here, from where I stand in the hot African wind, the sun even hotter. It is 4pm, two hours ahead of the UK, and time for a glass of wine. I can feel the desert wind, see the red sand game tracks winding like snakes through the reserve. Trees go on for ever, all the way up to the Blue Mountains, the Drakensburg range, reaching to 11,424 ft up into the sky within the border region of South Africa and Lesotho, and stretching for 1,000 km. The very thought of climbing that high peak puffs me clean out.

I search the Bush for heads, for movement, anything. A male giraffe would top these trees, easy and a scurry might mean zebra or Wildebeest or Kudu, the most beautiful, in my opinion, of deer with those stripe markings, that artistic shading, those twisted horns and those velvet eyes. Dinner for lions, but there are no lions here, no elephants, no crocs, no hippos, no danger, but wait……..I forget the leopard, but the kudu don’t, nor the impala, nor the kudu, the wildebeest, the warthogs, the bushbuck, waterbuck and all the other something bucks that nose around here pinching resident’s azaleas. About this time, a bit later, these offerings of dinner grow jumpy, move to ‘safe’ harbour, become alert and watchful, pulling in the teenagers from their raucous play, warning them. Also, around this time when porcupines are waking up and warthogs are doing this leopard jumpy thing, the termites get antsy (please excuse the pun, unintended) because it is quite the norm within this synergistic symbiosis for one of the above to make a frickin big hole, dug deep into the mound, one that can reach way over man’s head and be as wide as public toilet, sort of like a fairy castle to look at but looking is enough. Inside that mound are thousands and thousands of munchers which probably would bite your bum if you were to, unknowingly, rest it there on a big walk. Don’t do that. These ants are an inch, more, long and don’t welcome anyone much, not least a resting bum. In fact, all hell would let loose. A scout would alert and within seconds the super troopers would be on full attack mode. Although they would not eat you from the bum up, they will make sure you spend a long time regretting such contact with their fairy castle.

However, porcupines, aardvarks and those grisly chestnut warthogs don’t, frankly my dear, give a damn and one of them will, as aforementioned, dig a big hole deep into the castle, impervious, it seems to attack. During the day, the mostly nocturnal porcupine, or aardvark shuffles itself out into the night, I’m so not leopard food, just as the warthog, I so am, snuffles and grunts her way in, beckoning babies. They, it seems, are also impervious to ant attack which I’m sure they must encounter, but when I look close up at that thick skin, see a thick skin thing in their small and unintelligent eyes, I get it. It is all fight or flight for these squealers and maybe that is how they survive. I digress.

The sun is sinking, soft and slow, light dapples changing every moment, the light melting from butter yellow to a gentle gold. I see no giraffe heads above the trees but I sense they are there, out there, somewhere. Whether or not I see them seems unimportant. Just to know they might be there is a wonderful knowing. Just to hear the stories on the hot hot wind, to know that down there, down there, life is being lived and on the very edge of survival and every single night.

I am here. I am watching. I see this. I am upright, bright, lively and alive. There is nothing better. Nothing.

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Island Blog – True Communication

The weather here in Africa changes every day. Yesterday was too hot for toffees and bare feet on the deck, burning, broiling sun, the need for shade essential. Inside the weather stays much the same until load shedding when no air-conditioning cools the skin, when it becomes a sweat-fest, when moving around at all must be performed slowly in order to avoid a meltdown. Unusual, they tell me, those who live here. I can walk out in bright sunshine beneath a perfectly blue sky and return after one cup of excellent coffee in a deluge of warm rain, as if the clouds all agreed to dump their load and all at once. Just as quickly, it changes again. I am forever dinging back and forth with anti-mosquito spray only to have it showered off, reapply, shower, reapply. But this is a small problem in the face of the continuing elevation of power offs. For those who need power in order to run a business, it is a big deal, unless you have a noisy generator to fire up at such times and even that harrumphing beast won’t run everything. It wonders me. Is this a worsening thing or just for now? I believe the former and not just for Africa. It will come to all of us eventually. The key is in preparation, alternatives and attitude, much like everything else in life over which none of us has control. The only control we all have is over ourselves, our choices, our attitudes.

The Ha-di-das awaken me early each morning with their cawing. I am certain that they line up outside my window like a choir with tonsillitis, one, two, three, now! and I am blasted from sleep like a rocket from a bottle. They are big birds and everywhere and it is impossible to hear what another person is saying when they ha-di-da overhead. I decide they’re the crows of Africa but without crow intelligence, all that fleeing’ aboot and yelling the same stuff around the houses, following or chasing each other from tree to tree as if that’s all they need to do to justify their existence. In between their cawing chaotics, a sweeter song, the bulbul, smaller, softer of voice and considerably prettier of hue, lift and flutter between the branches preparing the second nest of the year. One bulbul calls, another answers, so politely. There’s no everyone-shouting-at-once thing with bulbuls. Other beautiful rainbow birds with floaty tails that arrive on a branch a few seconds after the body lands, petrol on water, aurora borealis, blood red, butter yellow, sky blue and emerald, the birds delight. None of them shout at each other. It thinks me of communication and the different ways we use it in our own lives.

We all have our colours, our voices, and we all want, no, long, to be heard, to be listened to. Sitting with another I want to hear what they say and then respond, probably with a question, thus making it clear that I have heard what you say and want to know more. If I am being a ha-di-da at that point, I may fall into the trap of counterpoint by bringing up an experience of my own. This, I have learned, is not what you want from me, not at all, because what I am doing is to dilute your story, thus indicating that I know how you feel, which is, of course, a nonsense. How can I know how you feel when I am not you? I can’t. So I ask a question based solely on what you have told me, a question that encourages you to continue. It is odd that we seem to need to compare stories as if that brings us both into a shared place, but we all do it. When himself died, so many people told me they knew how I felt and it was like they had taken out a great big eraser and rubbed my experiential feelings off the page. I stood my ground, said nothing, but felt myself disappearing because all of a sudden, the moment was lost to me and claimed by them as their own. I smiled but wanted to leave both them and the so called conversation which had suddenly become a competition.

I feel the same when someone keeps their mobile face up on the table between us, their eyes darting to look, their eyes off me. I just go quiet because I feel I am now unimportant and definitely unheard. But don’t we both have agendas and busy lives? yes, we do. However this moment we share is the moment to share, to listen to each other, eyes on each other, body language relaxed back and welcoming. You are here with me now and we are not ha-di-das but bulbuls or any other bird that has learned how to communicate softly, listening for a change in tone, in colour, feeling the story and learning from it. You tell me, beneath your words and if I am really engaged, that you are troubled about something, something that is of import and concern. You honour me by sharing, whether it be beneath your words, in your body language or clearly readable on your face. I want not to fix you because what you want from me is validation and a listening ear. Often my mouth doesn’t open at all at such times, because the urge to ‘suggest’ my solution to your problem is full in my mouth and I must needs keep my teeth firmly clenched against the spray which, if freed, will only serve to soak your story, to dissolve it.

Learning learning learning! It bizarres me oftentimes that I still have to, want to, learn a better way to communicate. When I was young and full of my own ha-di-da shrieks and rants, I never considered the rights and wrongs of conversation, my own agenda loud in my mind. I knew the way to solve this problem for you and I rolled it out like a wonderful bright carpet for you to walk on. Ridiculous, I know now, although I was mum of five and that brought a whole gamut of problems requiring immediate solution, but not now, I don’t ‘solve’ now because by not solving, not interrupting you with my marvellously mind-blowing idea, I allow you to find your own way through. And isn’t that all we want as we spread our problem out like a faded map across the table? I believe so, nay, have found it to be so as I listen, question gently and without challenge, without my agenda or my marvellously mind-blowing fix, I watch you light up with an idea, one that just might work for you, and all because I listened and paid attention, sitting firmly on my ego, my need to be the one who sorted you out.

You called. I responded. You spoke. I heard you. Mobile off, eyes on. Rain, sun, power off, power on, none of these are important when someone is vulnerable and trusting enough to tell me of their troubles. I am here. I hear you. I don’t solve you. You do. I know it. Keep talking for I am listening as the faded map between us begins to colour up.

This is true communication.

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Island Blog – Cats, Strong Women and Learning

The cats greet me at dawn, four of the five. I’m still working on the fifth, a nervous lad, a rescue like all the others. He is coming around, inch by nervous inch and I am hopeful that one day we will be friends. As I observe these cats I notice how independent they are, how individual and how they take no shit. Each does what it wants to do regardless of my plan, my agenda. I find that I like this sassy attitude even as one of them escapes my palm to leap atop the fridge freezer and to stare down at me. That’s what they do. They stare down at me. Ah, I think, I can learn a lot from you up there all lofty and dismissive and I rather wish I had adopted that attitude as a young woman. You can watch me all you like, try to reel me in, but if I don’t fancy your reeling in tactic I will distance myself and say not a word.

The South African women I have met have a similar attitude but they do use words, and confidently. They also will take no shit. If they encounter injustice, rudeness or inappropriate behaviour or just someone getting too close or sounding too patronising, they will round, talons out, mouths full of retaliation, minds confident, bodies strong and assertive. They sigh me too, a bit, because they show me who I always wanted to be, but wasn’t. Unlike in my youth, these women were taught to be singular and independent, their lives required it for living in Africa is real, no benefits, no guaranteed safety net, no easy path. There be dragons. In the UK it is more softly softly, girls are pink princesses requiring protection from all the boy stuff or from big decisions and these girls should behave themselves, wielding nothing more dangerous than a mop. At least that was how it was in my girlhood. I don’t think it’s the same now, but unless difficulties are encountered and imaginative practicality taught them at an early age, how can they learn? Here, where most need to face down dangers and restrictions, independent thinking is perfectly normal. If a woman wants something she must fight for it, and with her claws out. I like that and it thinks me.

Looking back on my own wifelife, there were plenty dangers and restrictions and, at the time I probably did mewl and whine as I encountered them but there was only me facing me during those times and I had to overcome my mewls and whines and to get the hell on with it. I guess I learned imaginative practicality on the hoof. If I didn’t sort something it would just stay unsorted and I had pride enough in myself to leap into a higher place and to look down on it with assessing eyes, my mind whirring. Living in a remote place, there was nobody to call on, not while himself was all at sea and guests required answers and solutions. If my kids were in trouble, I was the one to untrouble the trouble and I am proud to say that, in the main, I did just that. If some disaster struck or something collapsed or dissolved, I had no manual to read beyond the one inside my own head. I grew tough even when exhausted and overwhelmed because tough challenges are character building and I wanted to think of myself as a can-do solution oriented woman, no matter the restrictions I lived with. I gradually found room to move, to make space for myself and found, to a degree, my voice.

But I was also raised as a traditional girl, one who was told how a young lady should behave, all mannerly and subservient, all politeness, acquiescence, and femininity. In my time, women did not rise above their husbands, good lord no. Women who did were labelled bossy, man-like, loud, selfish and more, were required to speak with a husband’s opinion, to quietly lay down to his rules and restrictions and never to make a public fuss about it, although it was acceptable to talk with other women (gossip) in order to unburden the angst. As long, that is, that we go to another room to perform this unburdening lark leaving the men to roll their eyes at the pretty palaver of women as they knock back their brandies. A man who has too much to drink of a night is just, well, normal, such a lad, hugely entertaining, let’s put him to bed and cosset him as he sobers up. We’ll tease him at breakfast. Whereas a woman who drinks too much is a lush, disgusting, badly behaved and should be dismissed from the party in a ball of shame and rejection. No breakfast for her.

Confusion reigns in such a womanly life unless that is we can learn from cats and from other strongly independent women who will stand their ground until they fall over and if they are labelled as unfeminine, so be it. I have admired such women and learned from them over the years and I am so thankful to them. There weren’t many, t’is true, but when I found them I observed the way they quietly or loudly held their ground and I took the lesson given to heart. I learned to be not aggressive but assertive, to study my own mind and to put it in order. What do I believe about this? What is my position on that? Although I still step back when a strong man steps forward, for goodness sake, I am learning how to unlearn this, to question this presumed privilege and not to falter at any ensuing male startlement. I just hope the young pink princesses of today learn too, and a whole lot quicker than I did because the world is changing and the need for strong leadership in women, without the black cloud of bias, has never been more important.

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Island Blog – The River and the Flow

It’s all about rivers here, these African days of heavy rain, unheard of they say, even those who have lived here since childhood. Times are a-changing and that’s for sure. I wonder how the river life is coping with this abundance. Crocs will have more room in which to pretend they are rocks with eyes and the hippos, well, they can go anywhere, land or water and I’m sure they do. The mudslide turns a river bank into a skitter and many a zebra, impala, bushbuck, eland, nyala, to name but a few of the deers, giraffe, wildebeest, buffalo, warthog, person is at more risk than usual, when the bank stopped at the edge of the river and the river stopped at the edge of the bank. Roads have been washed clean away, gardens too and yet the ebullience of flora and fauna, the sudden rainbow blooms along the way sing a glorious song, thanks to this rain. The birds above the floods are spectacular. Even the dull looking ones back home are flamboyantly coloured up like disco lights in the tree canopy. Waterholes are full to bursting. I have only ever seen them dry, staring red-eyed at the sky, offering no relief to those thirsty wild ones who may have walked miles for succour and hydration. In my minds eye, I watch elephants flumping in the swollen pools, squirting each other, the little ones scooting along the bank trumpeting, or, rather, tooting, for they have to learn the trumpeting technique as they grow, much as we humans do when learning to play an instrument. I, we, haven’t been able to get to the camp, the one beside the river, the one around which all of the big five and more wander without reservation just whenever they fancy, because all the tracks have become, let’s say, rearranged over the past week. Ridgebacked and sluiced by deep rivulets, vast quantities of red sand washed down or pushed to one side, the track becomes trackless and most certainly does not allow traverse for a vehicle. So, the water controls the land, it seems and that makes sense to me. We can build all we like, the best house, the best road, fixing our human flags into a tract of land we call our own, and then the sky opens her maw and vomits for days, for nights until she is quite emptied out. Another week, they say. But, in between the thunderstorms and the deluge of rain, the sun is afire. Sitting in the sun lasts about 4 minutes, for the burn is ferocious. You don’t sunbathe in Africa unless you want to turn into brindle at best, biltong at worst, which I do not. I wander about in the garden doing this and almost can’t bear to stay for ‘that’, so hot is it out there.

Back to the river I have yet to see for real. Water is my element be it a river, the sea, ponds, lakes, tarns and puddles. I am drawn to them all in fascination, feeling the pull, loving the connection as if they are my birth mother. In the turbulence of my adolescence, wherein I felt like a zebra surrounded by lions, I imagined a river and saw it clearly in my imagination, watched all those fish going with the flow without independent thought and I could feel the disappointment. Why are you all following each other? Don’t you know we are all as unique as snowflakes or the stripes on a zebra’s back? It’s hard going against the flow, they burbled, and we feel better going with it. Pshaw! I snorted. Not me. Each time I was upbraided I was going against the flow. At times it was dreadful and I longed to be like Penny and Marion and all those other fish I met inside a school uniform or in the work place or later as a mother and wife. I even changed my writing to look like Penny’s and Marion’s, following them, following the flow. Yes, it did make life peaceful but the schisms in my mind, my heart, my soul had voices loud and demanding. In fact they were disappointed in me and that is the very worst thing, to be the disappointee. Certain I was born into the wrong family, a stork off course thing, I couldn’t not swim against the flow, not all of the time for real but all of the time inside my vulnerable heart. Instinctual behaviour was not encouraged and that’s the only way I could be. That way, they said, may lead to madness, at worst, a reform home at least. Well, I managed to dodge both thus far but it thinks me a lot when I consider this fitting in thing as if it is an essential requirement for life.

The ones I relate to now in my older life are always the ones with a twinkle in their eyes. Oh, Hallo You! You have run amok at least once in your life and you enjoyed it, didn’t you? Yes you aged and yes you learned how to balance the imbalance in your heart, your soul, your mind in order to fit in, I get that. Otherwise you would be either mad or in a reform home or worse, but tell me about those times. How did you get there at all when so many, constrained and for-your-own-good fettered folk just give up on their inner voice, their intuition. and have to spend a fortune and a zillion hours in later life re-learning that which came naturally at birth? I see the others, the conformers, in the river, conforming, going with the flow, going nowhere at all and it is all I can do not to scoop some of them up for a time of Q and A because they have not challenged what appears inevitable. So many, stuck in silent desperation, going to work and back again and loathing it, wondering Is This IT? Well, yes it is if you keep on keeping on with the same old routine. So turn around. Try it. It is definitely tougher but there are only a few of us and there’s so much light, so much to feed on, so many empty coorie-holes to safety in, and such a thrilling rush as the river pushes by and my goodness you’ll grow so strong.

I recommend at least a try. I also know and can see how incredibly hard it is to call a stop. There are others to consider, they depend on me, this is the shape we discussed and agreed upon and what would I do instead? An understandable dilemma but with one life, isn’t it worth deep consideration, a turn around in the river just to see things differently?

The river flows in one direction, always moving towards the ocean, always claiming land back along the way. Underground, overground the river flows. Think of the river as life. And then decide whether or not you want to remain with the flow.

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Island Blog – A Warthog, Clouds, Shapes and Colour

I am quickly getting friendly with the heat. It bizarres me that I can go from 6 degrees to 36 and not only love both but able to adapt almost immediately. Walking off the last week plane (Orville from The Rescuers) into dazzling sunshine and a load of hot people, I felt my spirits lift. Of course there was relief in there, somewhere, after gruelling airport and plane-ness, but to feel the slam of heat in my favourite place is more than warming. There is air-con in this lovely thatched African home, cool tiled floors and plenty shade on the outside of In, not to mention a swimming pool from which I just rescued (hopefully) a huge centipede critter with a name like Chingaloolie, with a million legs and a body about 10 inches long, as thick as my dad’s middle finger. I paddled in, scooped it up in a sieve and laid it on the deck. I’m hopeful as I definitely saw its feelers wiggle. This life-saving thingy reminds me of swimming in a Corfusian sea past endless (it seemed) honey bees paddling like dingbats and with no hope of survival. I scooped them up on the back of one hand, holding it aloft as I turned for shore with a lopsided breast stroke. I managed about 8 one day and felt super delighted with myself as if I, alone, had saved all bees. Finding a rock I encouraged the enfeebled to move off my hand. No thanks, they all said with a little tail waggle. Lord knows what they were saying to each other as I became a little nervous of upsetting them into a stinging frenzy. They wouldn’t, I said, not after I saved them from Davy Jones’ locker, and they didn’t.

It is too hot to walk the dog except for early doors but not too early because Lady Leopard might not have managed her night kill and still be hungry, not that scraggy me would fill her belly. Even the big dog, although more her style, wouldn’t be enough. I’ve seen the size of her dinners half way up a tall tree, where she dragged it away from a hyena scavenge, impala legs sticking out like bicycle spokes, its glazed over eyes no longer with sight, whilst her Ladyship lounged on another branch, yawning. It’s too hot today to make foray over the decking which burns like fire under naked feets. The good news is that, once I got the hang of the mechanical options, the washing will dry in about 30 minutes, unlike back home where clouds (obviously watching for the chance of mischief) gather and merge to dump their load just after I’ve gone back indoors. I watch the dragonflies, rainbow coloured, dart and dive through the garden. Electric blues, vibrant reds, butter yellows, like the birds that sing and whoop, screech and chitter through the acacia. So much colour so much life. I read and watch, startle at a bark. Baboon? They come, you know, without any idea of boundaries, leaping and bouncing through gardens, over high walls or to swing down from trees in search of food. The abundant Grenadilla hangs heavy with fruit and they love it. But, no, it isn’t baboon, this time, but a neighbouring dog with a talent for impersonation. I relax back, for now. I remember the last time I was in Africa, inside a wildlife reserve and working on my laptop on the stoep. I heard the bark of the head male, a massive creature with big yellow teeth and scarpered inside just in time to hear the roof drumming with baboon. Mothers with babies a-clung, exuberant teenagers and himself, the patriarch. I ran to lock the windows and doors. They pull doors open. In no time they were gone leaving my ears ringing with their screeches and thumps, my heart beating so fast I had to hide in the loo to calm down. It took me some time to ginger back out.

Yesterday we did walk through the reserve and enjoyed a stand off with a mother warthog. Her piglets squealed around her and we were careful, very careful, not to get in between her and her young. Those tusks are big and she will charge in a flash. She wouldn’t budge off the track. We inched forward as everything in me screamed TURN AROUND! My African son held my hand tight and slowly we moved onwards. She watched us pass, through those piggy eyes, as if we were no big deal but for the rest of the walk I was on tenterhooks. I had always considered warthogs to be hideous creatures but this far-too-close- encounter. showed me how stunning they are with that red-dust colouring and those fine lines. Nonetheless I would rather see them ways off from now on. Driving into town I see a male giraffe, his head way higher than the trees, whilst overhead huge vultures wheel and loop through the blue. Nothing compares to such sightings, so close, so free to roam, so endangered. Much of what I will see, have seen, will be nothing more than a picture in a school book in the not too distant future, a sad thought indeed, albeit an inevitable one. At least I have seen, with my own eyes, the real deal, watched it lope, run, pounce, climb, swing, charge. I know the Go Away signs, the body language, what not to do in the event of trouble and these come with feelings and memories not many future generations will ever experience.

A scoot into town for a coffee and I am thrilled to be remembered. The welcome from Cosmos at the Rock Fig was warm and smiley and the coffee as I remember, hot, strong and delicious. Thence to the material shop because I plan to sew a story using soft linens, threads and wools. Sewing without a scooby as to what will reveal itself, just working on instinct and with colours and shapes already seen, the insects, birds, animals and people, is deliciously freeing, the result oftentimes a complete surprise. It thinks me. A life is painted this way, starting at the beginning, being curious, trusting instincts, with courageous application of every small step. Looking back on my own life I can see the patterns and shapes I never saw at the time, not believing that these apparently insignificant choices and decisions I made could ever become a whole painting, become just that. We need the bland hues, the times we thought nothing much was happening, would ever happen, for the vibrant lifts of rich colour to really show. Life is a lot about waiting for something to present itself, a new path, a new relationship, a new opportunity and those times demand and require a patience we find lumpish and pale, like yesterday’s porridge. But Life has her plans. All we need to do is to show up and to keep showing up; to fake courage and a can-do attitude no matter how grey our sky, how full of colluding clouds; to keep taking another step and, most of all, to be curious like Alice, however old we might be in years. It is easy to falter, to fall and we all do it but there will be someone nearby who is upstanding. Reach out a hand and hold on tight, eyes wide with the looking and something or someone will appear to colour up the bland, to inspire, to startle our canvas into electric life. A new way to work with the old things is like sunshine on a rainy day, an eyelet through which we can see for miles. They were always there, the miles. We just needed a wee rest for a while.

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Island Blog – Into Africa and Nothing Else Matters

Blimey what a journey! Car to ferry, ferry to the mainland, down to Glasgow airport, which was half empty with no snakeline to checkin and no false bejewelled tans heading for Ibiza or some such destination. Then down to Heathrow which is the size of a small planet and peopled with nobody who says anything to anyone, at least not in the concourse. Delay number one. Apparently the luggage carriage lift thingy had got stuck half way up and half way down and we could hear a load of hammering beneath our feet as we sat and sat and sat. At least there was conversation in the belly of the beast this time and it thinked me, that people all tense and fretting about hand luggage and security and whether or not He has packed his spare set of dentures, not to mention all that ironing of cloth, never ironed as a rule, pre departure plus the baby teething and how on earth did that girl get into that body stocking with sparkles and isn’t she bloody freezing relax once there’s no going back. There still remains, however, the panic over who gets onto the whatever the train thing is called, everyone belly-stuck to the sliding doors just in case the flight goes without them, which it won’t and never does. Eyes on the 2 minute, 1 minute warning and the tension is palpable. We all needed a beer and to calm the heck down, especially as the luggage subsequently got stuck and held us in stasis for over 40 minutes. All that rush for nothing, in the end.

We land in Glasgow and the slow snail of faffing people dawdle off the plane drive us crazy. Our fault for choosing seats at the back of course, although you would think someone in authority might have requested that all those heading for possibly already missed connecting flights should leave the plane first. Well that didn’t happen. Nonetheless we hurtled (I was impressed with our hurtling) passed the tortoises and even a few hares to finally arrive at our gate, about 17 miles away from the one at which we landed. We waited. And waited, noticing on the app (yes I have one) each delay registered. A few minutes here, a few there but as we know so well, minutes can become an hour just like that, we had a third connection to make and there is a whole 11 hours of night to get through, sitting glued to a stranger and bolt upright. Everyone but we (or is it us?) slept. It was no fun, despite walking up and down the aisle, stretching gently because any wide-arced limbal reach might end in an assault and battery charge and we didn’t want that. We had to be polite ballet dancers in a very narrow corridor, a big ask of my African son who is built like Atlas. The last 4 hours were tough and it made me rethink my future journeys to beloved Africa, for I hope there will be many more to come. I did travel once, first class or business class wherein there’s a bed to stretch out on and no chance of being glued to a stranger, no matter how delightful he or she might be. However, it is very expensive in terms of cash. This trip was very expensive in terms of my comfort (not). Which is less important than the other?

It is so ‘normal’ to be cautious about spending money on ‘myself’. Well, it is for me and is for many others. But the core belief needs investigating. Whereas I might happily spend money to help my family members, I might maintain that I am happy wearing ‘this old thing’ for 25 years, when I am absolutely not happy at all. I just cannot get my head around the indulgence of money for me, for a thing that doesn’t feed the brood, nor enable the electric to work but would simply make me feel rather wonderful. There’s a master’s degree subject for you.

So, I may or I mayn’t consider upgrading for the journey home at the end of March. For sure I will dither, self-question, flip like a ping pong ball between yes I can and No I Cannot a gazillion times between now and then. In the meantime, I will watch butterflies the size of birds, Chameleons the size of small dogs and scented flowers that outsmart all designer perfumiers. This is Africa. I am here. And nothing else matters, even that this blog might be a tumbleweed of slipshod tiddleypom.

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Island Blog – Woman, She Says

There is an old woman I know. She is not very old but she is definitely no longer new. She can feel it in her bones and her mind. Those arms that once could heft potato sacks from ground control to the bed of a lorry now find it quite enough to lift a few books onto a shelf. Her hair is silvering, with a stout refusal to do it uniformly. She hates that bit about ageing. Eyebrows salt one hair at a time, each salt hair stronger and with a complete disregard for the calm-down brush. She catches sight of them occasionally, when she has her specs on, and is horrified. Now she must, with specs remaining in place, locate said strong, disregardful hair, with slightly shaky fingers and her small tweezers. It really is not fair, she mutters, this unpleasant process. Recently she misfired and made a rather interesting gap in one brow. Huh! she says. See if I care, she says. I’ll call you a scar and own you. You won’t bring me down, she says, and once she removes her specs, the evidence has disappeared completely. A similar challenge arises at make up time. She is careful not to apply slap in the dark, or in half-light. The day must be well and truly risen before slap app. She remembers older women with orangutang faces, with MacDonald Red cheeks, lips loose with pink leak and alien eyes. She vows never to look like they did, just as they did.

She loves flowers and colour, frocks and boots. She buys too many of the latter. There are three pairs of glorious boots that stand in anticipatory waiting beside her back door, polished but never worn. She has had to expand her wardrobe pole oftentimes. She does this by wheeching some frocks, unworn for well over a year but retained, just in case someone threw a ball on the island or invited her out for a formal dinner. In her heart she knows this is never going to happen, but she bought them anyway for their gorgeous folds and perfect lines. The flowers she loves pepper the drystone walls and freckle her garden. She arranges them in vases around the house and breathes in their fresh sweet scent. She watches them close at night, open at first light, just as she does, following the rise and fall of the sun. She plays music all day long. She loves music. Sometimes she plays Vivaldi, sometimes Radio Two, sometimes her own playlist of beloved tunes and songs that yank her into rememberings, or strum her heart strings with their lyrics, their cadences, their rise, rise and fall into a pool of golden warmth that brings tears to her eyes for no reason at all.

She loves her dog and the way the windows keep out the rain. She loves her new bed and the electrically inspired mattress cover that warms her all the way up to number 6 and which turns off in an hour. She loves the way the curtains breathe like lungs on a windy night and the way the light turns moody when a grey day morphs into a greying night. She loves clouds and grandchildren, the way they laugh so easily and cry without embarrassment. She love spontaneity and change, boiled eggs and wildness. She loves nature, singing out just for the hell of it, walking in the fairy woods and talking to trees, stones, the men who delivered wood just as she ran out. She loves sea salt and balsamic rice cakes, tsaziki, Barcelona and Africa. She remembers holidays, moments, weddings, births and deaths. She remembers her life, a yawling wiggly line of a million wonders, of pain, of divine intervention when nothing human could offer help. She talks to God. She reckons he is there somewhere. In fact she knows he is, or she is, because too many things have happened to save her bacon. She loves art, from Michael Angelo to Banksy and even further back. She can easily listen to music from all genres, depending on ear tolerance.

She loves sewing things for others, repairing and patching. She loves moving things around so the room takes on a new song. She decorates things, any things. A tall standing lamp reminds her. Covered from toe to shade in patchwork material and dangling with pretty lights, baubles and beads, it shines its individuality to the world. Well, no, not the world, says the lamp. About 5 people pass this way on a regular basis. Steady on old woman with the ‘world’ delusion. Okay, she says, you are right. But I don’t do any of this for others to admire. I do this for me. The lamp is silent. She looks around the room at the family photos, canvases of captured moments. She is holding her first granddaughter in her arms at a wedding. Their smiles are rapt. She is sitting in a cafe in Spain and laughing. She is in Africa playing scrabble in a welcome shade whilst zebra, giraffe and warthog wander by the stoep in an evening cool. She is singing at a wedding, dancing at a birthday disco, eating sushi, playing with grandchildren.

All is well, she says. I am well, she says. I am who I made myself and my life is every colour on the wheel.

She says.

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Island Blog – Animation

This night my African son tells me he is going out for dinner with his wife and her folks. I know the place. Its all sand drives and security controlled, a sort of housing estate but without living too close to anyone else. In the mornings and evenings, they watch giraffe, zebra, warthog and a million rainbow birds who come by in their search for water and possible food. The local shop sells wild animal food pellets and, although none of the above agree with feeding wildlife, it is tempting. It means the animals stay awhile and I get that. Did it myself when I was there.

On the ‘estate’ that flanks a big croc busy river, lies Kruger park on the other side and fenced high. From viewpoints we can see elephants, leopard (if we are lucky), crocs, hippos, kudu, giraffe, zebra and so much more. It is quite intoxicating. They seem so near and so safe and yet not one of them is either. There are a few restaurants, all a big sandy drive away, and some offering eventide views of the big five coming for water, for it overlooks a freshwater pool (when there is rain, which is not often). Some restaurants are nestled in the bush, and the sounds of cracking branches and birdsong, like we never hear in the UK, interrupt and cause us to look here, or there for a catch of rainbow or the big butt of a rhino just minding her own business, for we are are on her territory.

It thinks me. It has been a very long time since I felt that flutter of anticipation, knowing I was going out for dinner; what dress to wear after a shower, what boots to wear, what perfume? Like an electric pulse but not one that hurts. If I knew in the morning, it fizzed me all day long. If, as was often the case with me and Popz, it was 30 minutes warning but nonetheless the electricity fizzled. He might say (way back in the day) What’s for supper? I might say Ah I don’t feel like cooking tonight and he would respond immediately with Let’s go out and I was hooked, line and sinker. We have…..had…. superb restaurants on the island, brilliant ambience and excellent chefs and I knew he was driving so I could just enjoy my wine. We went oft in the summer months. I loved that. Needless to say we didn’t go out (for some time) once he became compromised with what he could eat, the amount of voice ‘noise’ he could bear and the whole faff of driving out when he was really ready for bed. It happened like a season. Slow, gradual, almost not noticed.

Looking back I remember the wild times. The suddenness of action. Pick up your bed and walk, kind of thing. I got really good at looking marvellous in minutes. I can do it now, but now there is covid and fear and all restaurants closed and the ferry a threat and, although I thank this isolation time for the chance he and I had to re-connect as friends, I would choose it gone.

Once, on my chance for escape, when day time carers were enough for him, I took myself to Glasgow, to the river and to a flat on the quayside. It was a few minutes walk to about four excellent restaurants. In the morning I wandered out to choose my place for the evening meal, the lights, the buzz, the life. I had no problem at all booking a table for one.

I wonder if I will find this place again, this animation, this lift of independent life.