Harvey Tile Holiday

{In Zambia my daughter Eleanor sees this sign on a school: "A roof without Harvey Tiles is like a school without teachers. There will be illiteracy. and on a police station : " A roof without Harvey tiles is like a country without police. There will be lawlessness] The family ponders on these words]

 It's early morning in Swakopmund.
Cold mist sinks down upon the sea.
A desert lies bleak and menacing behind us.
"A roof without Harvey tiles is like dawn without sun" says my son-in-law Andreas
"There will be chill and desolation."

We travel north on a black salt road.
Sand stretches pale and pink on either side.
Liquid cools in flasks and sandwich edges curl.
"A roof without Harvey Tiles is like tea without cake" says my granddaughter, Isabel.
"There will be tastelessness."

In Etosha the grass glows yellow in the sun.
A pale sky floats above muddy pools.
We sit in silence with binoculars.
"A roof without Harvey Tiles is like a water-hole without game." says my daughter, Eleanor.
"There will be boredom."

But then the springbok, zebra, kudu all arrive
and later floodlit families of elephants with slurping trunks
and later still, a hyena;s speckled head is seen
reflected in the water.

And when I fly home far too soon --
"A roof without Harvey Tiles is like an old woman without her family," I say.
"There will be boredom, tastelessness, chill and desolation."

Namibian Holiday

Now that I have been back home for a few days, I think I have recovered enough to write about my holiday. It was good, too good. Now everything seems dull and flat. it doesn't help that I got used to being part of a family again, so my little flat seems very empty and lonely, now. To counteract this sterile self pity, I shall try to record some of the highlights: the sights, scenes and activities of my two weeks in Namibia.

I have downloaded an awful lot of pictures, even after sorting them out and deleting the worst of them, they fill large file. I shall chose a few and write about each and in this way try to capture the essence of my Namibian holiday.

Walvis Bay:
a surprisingly large town in an enormous expanse of nothingness. Our plane was the only one arriving at the little airport, so it was hard to understand why it had to be parked miles away from the airport building necessitating a long trudge across the tarmac carrying hand luggage,(in my case, mercifully,only a handbag.)
Eleanor, Andreas and Isabel all came there to meet me. They took me to a restaurant in Walvis Bay for lunch and then for a stroll along the front to see the lagoon's flamingoes, all bright pink in the sun. Flamingoes allow you to get close enough to admire their weird beauty, their long elegant necks, their slow-striding graceful pink legs and their big beaks like shovels, but move away before you can get your camera focused.
This photo of these lovely birds in flight is not as clear as I would have wished, but is the best I could do.
SWAKOPMUND:
A lovely clean seaside town, everything neat and tidy, with a distinctive continental flavour, although modern architecture is infiltrating the traditional buildings.  Ordinary South African supermarkets can be found between the old nineteenth century German  houses.

The one pictured, once belonged to Andreas's mother's family and is just round the corner from where she lives now. There was time for only one night there, because Elanor and Andreas wanted to take me to Etosha and those next three days were the only bookings available.

 
It was a long drive though the most desolate country I have ever seen. I couldn't believe any desert could be quite so desert-like. It has it's own beauty, but I would find it hard to get used to. Slowly the dry emptiness gave way to thornscrub and savannah and there were even some animals to be seen, notably warthog. They seem to like to forage at the sides of the road. We spent the night at a lodge outside the reserve. We were cheated of a Namibian sunset, by having to have our sun-downers on the wrong side of the dining hall, but the accommodation was comfortable and the breakfast adequate. We reached the gate to the reserve quite early and had time to look around before checking in to Okaukuejo camp. A feature of this camp is its tower which I climbed while Eleanor and Andreas checked in, not knowing that we would all be climbing it later. Going up all those steps twice caused my calves to be stiff and painful for days.

The view from the top was very good. Unfortunately my camera was not able to record adequately the spectacular sunset we experienced there.

We spent the next night at Halali camp. Both camps were well appointed( I think that is what one is supposed to say about satisfactory accommodation ) and pleasant to stay at. The best feature at both was the access to waterholes. Places were provided where you could sit and watch the animals coming to drink. At these we saw an amazing variety of game especially in the evenings. (The pools were floodlit at night which made late viewing possible.) We were lucky enough to see a hyena come down to drink. I wasn't able to photograph him, but I could see him very clearly as he bent his spotty head down to the water.

The most exciting sighting for me was the leopard we saw hiding in a thorn tree very close to the road. Difficult to spot unless you knew exactly where to look, but his face clearly to be seen peering through the leaves.  But also, I was thrilled to see two young lions, their faces bloodied from a recent kill, making their was towards a nearby water hole. And of course there were the zebras, fat and stripy, hundreds of them, and the buck, hundreds of them too, and best of all the elephants at the water holes.
Here are just a few of the photos I took.

We went back to Swakopmund, after making a detour to see a huge meteor, shiny and heavy and not star-like at all. While we were at Swakopmund we spent a day in the desert.  The others in the party slid down huge dunes on surfboards. I just watched from afar and enjoyed the scenery. This part of the desert is so empty and so beautiful.

But, even here where you would expect no life at all, there are birds. I think this one is a banded plover.

Now it is all over. It's sad to be back, but I have had fun compiling this blog.

Wasn't this a great holiday?

Poetry Afternoon

Melanie, the manager is initiating a poetry afternoon for the residents. I suppose, as the poet in our midst, it has been organised more or less in my honour. I shall be expected to read something from my new collection Others will read old favourites.  I hope not too many selections from Junior school curricula.  I learnt so many off by heart in my youth and I find most of them only too familiar and often rather painful to listen to. Allan has promised to read an old ballad in dialect which will make a nice change. I am a literary snob, I know. I must try my best to be appreciative. I really do want to foster the love of poetry and this is where it starts. There is not much hope of changing people's tastes, but perhaps I could introduce some of the really good modern poetry which I have been learning about recently

I should not be so scornful. My superior attitude is not based on a wide knowledge of poetic literature. Quite the contrary. I hardly read a line of poetry after I left school. Only after starting to write the stuff myself and joining Finuala's workshop group did I read anything written after the first years of the last century.

Lately I have been attending Hugh's Poetry School. He has not only taught us  about the proper use of simile and metaphor, but has introduced us to several different forms and got us to try our hands at some of them.
So far we have studied sonnets, villanelles and haikus( I missed that lesson I am glad to say- I just can't manage the form at all, although I can see the value of the discipline of having to distill one's thoughts into a few syllables) The latest form was the pantoum. I have come across this before. Eugenie is very fond of pantoums. Until now I have thought writing them a futile exercise. However when I tried to write a short form of pantoum and gave myself the added problem of writing it in rhyming couplets, I was quite pleased with the result.

After spending quite a lot of time on these exercises I have come to the conclusion that certain subjects require certain kinds of poetry. One can't imagine the poem 'One Art" for instance being written in any form other than a Villanelle and the thoughts expressed in "Westminster Bridge" could only have been conveyed   in a sonnet.

Easter Sunday

For once, Easter Sunday was a beautiful sunny day. The little church of All Saints was full. The Youth band played cheerful choruses, the Sunday School sung Jabulani. Toddlers ran up and down the aisles. Baby Mercedes gave us all a big smile as she was baptised. The sermon was short and we all got Easter eggs. Young and old celebrating Christ's Resurrection. The best Easter Sunday Ever.

Feeding the poor

A post on Facebook showed pictures of large and elaborate churches and a starving man with the comment: "We just can't afford to feed this man" I am not quite sure what the purpose of the post was. It seems to imply that an opulent Church cares nothing for the poor and hungry. As in so many generalisations, there is some truth in this. Of course Christians should do more. As long as there are starving people in this world, we should be out there feeding them. I know that I for one am not doing as much as I could. Jesus told us, "Give to those who ask you and don't turn from those who would borrow from you."  I sometimes flatter myself that I try to do this, but then I ignore the beggar at my car window and forget to take my contribution to the Church Food Basket on Sunday. I am not supporting charities like School feeding schemes because I have been too lazy to arrange to do so.   There are always good excuses for one's meanness. I give the example of a woman I knew who lived on the street and got a good meal every day at one or other church in her neighbourhood so she could spend her entire disability allowance on drink and I use this to justify not helping one of our parishioners to make sandwiches for the homeless people who hang around Muizenberg.  Because one's giving may be abused, does not absolve one from giving.

But the picture of the Church as being opulent and luxurious is not very accurate. Some churches may be, but none of those I have ever been involved in. Church finances seem to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and the clergy are expected to exist on incomes that most of us would consider quite inadequate. I don't know how they manage. We should be thanking God every day for their dedication and devotion.

Going to Poetry School

I haven't written anything for quite a long time. I suppose it must be because I have been too busy with Hugh's Poetry School. This regular Wednesday morning session has been very interesting and informative besides being most enjoyable. But it has also been challenging. We have been exposed to different kinds and  forms of poetry and then set the task of writing poems in the specific genres.  I have never been fond of using any formal structure in my poetry, but the discipline of writing something as rigidly defined as a sonnet has, I know, been very good for me. I have, to date, written three sonnets.  I battled over each one for days. But, to my surprise, when we turned to villanelles I found I could churn them out at the drop of a ballpoint. Here is my latest:

The companion

There is someone always following me

I’m sure, I’m sure, there’s someone there.

but when I turn, there’s nothing I can see

In the soft rustle of the dry leaves of a tree

and in the sighing grasses I can hear

there’s someone always following me

Sometimes walking alone beside the sea,

the splashing of his feet tells me he is near,

but when I turn there’s nothing I can see.

However fast I run I cannot flee

I try to hide away, but everywhere

I go there’s someone following me

That sound like the faint buzzing of a bee

I know he’s breathing at my back.  I fear

to turn, although there’s nothing I can see.

What can he mean by it? And who is he ?

What does he want? Why does he care?

He never speaks; he only follows me

and when I turn there’s nothing I can see

God and the tooth fairy

"I believe in God like I believe in the tooth fairy" That is what somebody said recently and this made me think about the silly stories we tell children. In my family, it wasn't a fairy that rewarded a child for losing a tooth, but a mouse.  I'm afraid that our house-mice were rather unreliable tooth collectors and often forgot to exchange them for sixpences(the going rate then). Four children, very close in age lost teeth so frequently. My kids soon lost faith in the ritual of placing a tooth in a shoe under the bed.  I wasn't sorry. Although this kind of thing was expected of parents, I never really liked telling lies to my children, even lies as white as those about mice and teeth or about Father Christmas. I know that as a child I was relieved to find that it was my dear kind Dad that put presents by my bed on Christmas eve and not a scary old man who climbed down chimneys like a burglar. I didn't mind mice, I thought them harmless and rather cute, but I never liked fairies. They were too much like mosquitoes. I was determined not to believe in them. I am glad I was never introduced to the idea of a tooth fairy. A mouse exchanging money for a tooth was much easier to believe in. My children had all seen mice. Infestations of rodents were common in houses in Zambia. One could understand a mouse liking a tooth to gnaw on like a dog gnaws on a bone, but what would a fairy want with a tooth?
Where did the idea of a tooth fairy come from? Is it an American invention? Did they arise spontaneously there or were they brought over the Atlantic from one or other Old Country. (something for me to Google?) For that matter where does the idea of fairies come from? The fairy story is a very old tradition in Europe, but what gave rise to it? I know that there are people who are sure they exist and swear that they have seen them. Ruby Reeves, an artist who lived near us in George had fairies living in her garden. She would visit them and talk to them often. She wrote about them and painted many beautiful pictures of them. My daughter, Dorothy, said she had also seen them there when she and a friend went to Ruby's house. But my daughter was schizophrenic and suffered from other delusions too.

I can't remember if I ever told my grandson about the tooth mouse. I am sure I didn't ever mention fairies. But I suppose even such a sceptical child as he, believed in Santa Claus too when he was very young or at least pretended to. For all my children, the belief in this unsavoury old guy died out early, but the custom of hanging up stockings lasted until late adolescence. Why don't we all do that? Keep the Christmas stockings and leave Santa out of it. Isn't it better for children to know that what we tell them is true, or at least as close to truth as we are able to get.