The Boy with the Donkey

At night, travelling on the road to Beitbridge you often come across groups of donkeys, very difficult to see in the darkness as they have no reflectors behind the retina so their eyes do not glow in the dark when car headlights fall across them. 

As we know, donkeys have always been beasts of burden.

Also on the road to Beitbridge, before the Lion and Elephant Hotel (a good overnight stop), was a farm owned by a grandmother who lived with her grandson. Lions invaded her farm and were killing some of the animals, so two lion hunters were asked to come and get rid of them. They brought an old blind donkey with them to use as bait.

The grandson fell in love with the old donkey. 

He looked after his new found friend, sat on his back, walked with him and talked to him. One of the hunters came to collect the donkey and the boy pleaded with him not to take the donkey away. The hunter said that he would leave it and the boy was delighted and relieved.

A few days later the second hunter, an older man, arrived not knowing about the previous conversations and he had come to take the donkey away.

Once again the boy pleaded with him to please leave it. “Please, please, please!” The boy’s grandmother joined in with his pleas and explained that the boy loved the donkey as a friend and would be heartbroken. Eventually the hunter gave in and said that he would leave the donkey.

Not long after that, the grandmother and her grandson were ordered to leave the farm. They were given 3 months to get off the farm. They had to move the donkey in a specially secured truck to their new home. When they were resettled, the boy acquired two more donkeys so his little group of donkeys expanded. The old blind donkey lived happily for quite some time in his new surroundings and eventually died peacefully.

The grandmother wants to make a donkey sanctuary as a donkey reserve has now been started in Zimbabwe.

*****

The Donkey – by G.K Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry

And ears like errant wings,

The devils walking parody

On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,

Of ancient crooked will;

Starve, scourge, deride me; I am dumb,

I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet:

There was a shout about my ears,

And palms before my feet.

Spring in Zimbabwe

Pic by Pauline Battigelli 

When I reached Zimbabwe in August this year, I timed my visit so that the Msasa trees would be in early leaf. I had to wait a few weeks and suddenly from their dry branches sprang soft new leaves. This year a glowing burnt sienna was reflecting the colour of the ground from which the tree had grown.

The new leaves are very tender and a knowledgeable botanist told me that the colour of the new leaf does not attract animals which could be drawn to munching up such a delicate scrap. The colour of the new Msasa leaves are in fact a protection against hungry animals much as a thorn protects a thorn bush.

After a few weeks the chlorophyll in the leaves builds up and changes bronze colours to green.

In the evenings, my son Richard and I would take a walk through the grounds of Peterhouse School to greet the spring colour and watch the sunsets across the green playing fields. All quite, quite breath taking. Some evenings a piper and teacher at the school would walk down onto the field and play his bagpipes, giving an added contribution to the extravaganza.

The Msasa colours last only a few weeks until the leaves strengthen and turn green.

Spring in Zimbabwe- there is nothing like it. After the colourful display of the Msasas, the next blossoming are the Jacaranda’s with their purple trumpet-like flowers and then the fiery spread of the Flamboyant trees.

Jacaranda trees

I returned to Johannesburg on the 5^th of November and the next week Zimbabwe itself was having a change for the better. We hope and pray with the retirement of Robert Gabriel Mugabe that this will be a new spring for Zimbabwe, as beautiful, colourful and rich as the blossom of the trees that grow there.

"Msasas"  - Pauline Battigelli

 Travelling in Zimbabwe

The police in Zimbabwe are continually stopping cars and inspecting every inch of them with a long list of specific requirements that need to be visible in every vehicle. These road blocks cause delays and obstructions to moving traffic. Heavy fines are demanded if anything is out of alignment or not visible. In the meantime, on the streets and roads there is a high rate of serious accidents. The police always manage to find something not quite right and issue the drivers with a $US20 fine, which they will drop to $US10 if you look pathetic enough.

We had an experience driving into Harare. We were stopped for driving 70km/h in a 60km zone. This was perfectly correct as Richard did not see the speed sign. A policeman came to my window and said that we would have to pay a speeding fine of $US20. He took one look at my face and said kindly, “Ah, but you are too old. We will make it $US10,” for which I thanked him for the compliment. He then sent a young police woman of generous proportions to the window and she was paid the $US10.

My daughter-in-law asked politely for a receipt. The police woman stomped off and came back with one which she pushed through the window. I expected Richard to take the receipt and hold it for a few moments but he didn’t and neither did I as I do not see well. Impatiently she threw the receipt in my face and once again stomped off! We wondered why she was irritated at having to give us a receipt…

We hope with the new change in Zimbabwe, there will be a different attitude adopted by the police.

The Beekeeper

I am presently living with my eldest son Anthony and his wife Pia in Johannesburg.

The garden is spacious, peaceful and well-treed, offering sweet smelling Syringa blossom in the spring and a wonderful habitat for birds and bees.

The bees formed a huge hive under part of the roof over the main bedroom and bathroom. During the night, attracted by light, some of the bees would somehow climb down into the bedroom and lie doggo on a pillow or the carpet resulting in some fierce stings when pressurized by a cheek or a foot.

Pia, who is allergic to bee stings, seemed to bear the brunt of this.

After a particularly painful sting on the foot she said to Anthony: “Either I go, or the bees go!” 

He asked her where she would go to and unthinkingly she said: “.. to a B&B”.

At long last Anthony decided he would have to have the bees removed, much to Pia’s relief. He found a beekeeper who arrived in a truck with a long ladder tied to the roof with a bit of rope. He was dressed in a white protection suit and he swiftly removed and set up his ladder to inspect the hive with bare hands and no protection on his face.

a  bee smoking device

He carried with him a bee smoker device, used to make the bees dozy. It was a small mug with a lid and a long spout carrying straw.

Bee careful

Unfortunately he mislaid his lighter and got stung on the cheek. He hurried down the ladder, donned a protective headgear, borrowed a lighter from Ant and up he climbed into the roof once more. He told Anthony that when one bee stings you others follow suit. His bare hands were stung many times but he did not seem to worry about that and simply removed the stings and went on with his work.

"I was full of admiration" 

I watched the beekeeper happily going on with his work of dismantling a huge swarm which had been living there for years. I was full of admiration. 

He removed the darkest comb first with the many, many little black baby bees which he placed with their Queen in a cardboard box on the top of his truck.

Bees followed their Queen in clouds and buzzed in confusion around the box, whereupon another swarm from some neighbouring garden invaded the situation and in no time a sort of bee war went on with complete bee fury!

We were all safely inside behind closed windows with the dogs and watched with fascination.

Eventually the cardboard box was put into the truck and the beekeeper left at great speed down the drive, pursued by a swarm.

Evidently the bees have some extra sensory perception or antennae which warn them of flying over 35 kms an hour so many flew into the box after the Queen while others I suppose must have just dispersed. 

The honey comb had been put into buckets; the beekeeper would then settle the bees in a new hive.

In an hour or so the beekeeper arrived back for the mop up operations and to put tiles back on the roof. He went to collect payment from Anthony who asked him his name and email address. “Ant 4 B” said the beekeeper.

“I am called Ant too!” said Anthony. “What is your second name?”

“Lawrence,” replied the beekeeper.

“That’s odd,” said Anthony, “My second name is Lawrence too, spelled the same way as yours.”

I was sent for to establish if they were at all related, and I said that the Lawrence family were indeed relatives of ours. They were engineers and shipbuilders from a farm in Scotland called “Tillygthills” and had settled many years ago in the Kimberley area where my mother was born.

We will have to sort out the full history of our relationship at a later date but I do know that the Lawrence family of Kimberley with James and Alexander Lawrence as our forefathers were famous in their day for building churches and bridges in South Africa.

“I knew you were special Anthony Lawrence,” I told the beekeeper. 

“When I watched you handling those bees!”

Creation

Oh loving Father in heaven. You are a glorious, mighty God and yet all can come to you as little children, in the name of your beloved son Jesus, and call you father.

May we as adults, growing older, keep the vision with which we first became aware. May we keep our delight in the start of each new day and the peaceful sleep at night knowing we are in your loving hands.

We praise you for the rhythms of nature sustained year after year. Winter, spring, summer and autumn; day and night; and wind, rain and snow. Clear days with brilliant sun; days of gathering clouds and gusts of wind.

Bluebells by Jeanetta

For the falling orange-gold leaves we thank you Father, and for the new leaves that spring from dry branches in the spring. For the sunlight making patterns on the grass, sending diamonds of light onto the green. 

We thank you for the changes of light with which you have showered us - the dawn, gentle at first and then dazzling, then softening again in the evening with the radiance and colours of unending daily sunsets.

Thank you for the light on clouds, white, grey and deep blue-grey changing and touched by dawn and sunset.

The stars Father, the stars, they are too beautiful yet far away in the deep blue-black of the night and the changing moon from a crescent to the full roundness of silver light.

How you have used colour great artist! The redness of a rose, full blooded and warm, the bright yellow of a nasturtium, the blue of a delphinium. What gentle care made the pansies? There are faces painted on pansies; their shining faces look up from their beds in the earth. Each leaf of the variegated ivy seems to have a different brush stroke.

The sharpness of the strelitzia growing like a beautiful bird on its heavy stalk;

Strelitzia by Cheryl

the morning and evening birdsong; the fish in the water; the birds and insects in the air and on the ground. The hallelujah shout of colour from the bouganvilleas.

Within each colour range there is variation, so many shades of green, delicate sweeps of mauves and grey on far off mountains, with a palette of red, brown fertile earth and ochre grass. And the earth, which you have made with more breadth of variety and wonder.

Lily pond  by Claude Monet

Artists have painted landscapes through the ages which have given us new glimpses and appreciation of your stunning, magnificent earth. The sunsets of Turner, the dappled shade of Monet; I think of the rules of perspective with wonder too, Father, such as the largeness and smallest of your animals and insects and dare I say, touches of humour.

And then you gave us the rivers and the seas. Father the magnificent sea with its tides, moving in continuous waves which crash and then subside and gently wash over in the sand in foam curves.

The human form with its different structures of bone, muscle and faculties is another intricate and marvellous mystery.

Praise you great God and loving Father, for this magnificent creation.

A poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

Pied Beauty

 Glory be to God for dappled things -

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;

       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                     Praise Him.

On my knees I thank you Father for your generous, patterned, varied, rhythmic, exuberant and wonderfully extravagant creation.