Gems

Gems

On Tuesday afternoons, I usually call on Albert. He’s pretty much stuck at home these days, his bones are stiffening up and he misses conversation. We have much the same interests and these days both of us have difficulty finding other like minds in which to indulge ourselves. He keeps a magnificent garden, which is one of our shared interests, but besides flowering shrubs, he has a passion for annuals, which I can’t afford, because those pesky bunnies munch them as fast as I plant them! Last time I visited, he wanted to show me his Peasgood Nonesuch apple tree that wasn’t flowering as well as his others or as he supposed it should. As we passed his favourite Prunus, he mentioned that its flowering had finished, but I noticed the carpet of red, spent flowers beneath the tree. It prompted me to tell him about the Jacarandas of Monduli.

Monduli is easier to reach these days because the road has been upgraded and resealed. When we worked there the old sealed road was full of large, deep craters and picking a way through them was slower than if the road had been unsealed! Before reaching the township, the road passes the military academy and I’m happy to say, the trees I supplied them are growing well. The name, Monduli is shared by the District and the town, so-named after a Maasai elder. There are several district offices in the town, among them the Education and Water offices we had business from time to time. There is also a Teachers Training College, three secondary schools and two primary schools, all of which also received tree seedlings from our nursery project based at Sanawari.

When the country was Tanganyika and run by the Germans, someone planted Jacaranda trees there. They were planted along the roads in the higher parts of the village, probably because the micro-climate was a little cooler for the German officials. Jacaranda comes from Central and Southern America and in the right conditions grows quite rapidly. Its timber isn’t much use, being pale, soft and not very durable. The good thing is that it carves easily and blackened with shoe polish looks close enough to African Blackwood, so in a way it saves that species from being illegally cut to make tourist trinkets. It’s a hungry species, so it’s not good to plant it where crops are to be grown. I grew it in the nursery from seed collected in Monduli and distributed it as an amenity tree, for which there was a demand. The trees the Germans planted are perhaps twenty metres high and have crowned out to form a beautiful tunnel along which the road travels. When the trees are covered in their magnificent lilac-blue flowers, with their spent flowers lying beneath, carpeting a purple road, it is a sight to behold. Truly beautiful!

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There’s a small dot on the map some twenty kilometres off the East Coast of Africa that’s the island of Unguja, more commonly referred to as Zanzibar. A favourite Sinbad-place of mine where I was fortunate enough to visit several times. A testament to the spell the island can cast upon people if they allow it. We were about to leave there for the last time, so on our final night we visited the waterfront food market and as usual, bought more food than our stomachs could cope with. We found a quiet, less-populated spot to do our best to wade through all the food, sitting on rocks in the dark. There wasn’t much artificial light, just enough to see what we were eating. The tropical night at sea-level had that a comfortable feel, a pleasant warmth on the skin. The sounds of the night-time insects at play filled the air. Through the darkness, the sea was inky-glass and the dull-white sails of two dhows cut into the ink leaving a trail of soft phosphorescence. Quite suddenly there was bright flashing of light among the clouds above the Africa mainland! We were treated to a natural fireworks display where the shape of the turreted clouds diffused the lightning flashes so there were billows of every shade of white! The storm played on, distracting us from our meal, but it was an awesome distraction. For us it was a one-off event, no doubt common during the rainy season but totally unique and spellbinding for us!

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You have to see the Zambezi River to appreciate its size! She springs up from Zambia and flows through part of Angola, along the border of Namibia and the northern border of Botswana, along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe to Mozambique, where she tumbles into the Indian Ocean. The river forms part of the boundary between Zambia and Zimbabwe, so the famed Victoria Falls are shared by both counties. ‘The smoke that thunders’ refers to the mist created by massive amounts of water tumbling over a wide, high chasm, and the world’s widest sheet of falling water creates the thunder. We were there when the river was at its lowest ebb for fifty years but still, she was thundering and misting. With nobody else around, we scrambled through the waters-edge scrubland to find the river had receded far out from its bank, allowing us to see beached coins, hundreds of them in all shapes and sizes, that had been thrown into pools by tourists presumably ‘for luck’, but for now were left high and dry. There was no general access to this spot, so the luck-seekers must have visited some time in the past fifty years or more. Anyway it’s disrespectful to interfere with peoples’ hopes for luck, so we didn’t. Remarkably I was able to stand where water usually tumbles over edge of the falls – breath-taking, well it took mine! On solid river-worn basalt rock I apprehensively peered over the edge, I couldn’t see into the gorge because of the mist. No, I didn’t risk dangling my legs over the edge, I could see myself doing it, but the voice on my shoulder and Mags’ wagging finger convinced me that I had already experienced something quite unique. It was a thrill to have been there at that time.

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It wasn’t unusual to give lifts to people as we passed through villages during our days of forestry extension work. Some people really, really needed a lift while others were just taking the opportunity to make their journey a little easier. A young Maasai woman was holding her hand out in the usual way of politely signalling for a lift. She had recognised the vehicle from her school days, and she was on her way to her mother’s boma, which was in the general direction of where we were headed. The woman’s vibrancy filled the cab the moment she stepped foot in the vehicle. A truly beautiful young woman. We spoke lilting Swahili until she mentioned the trees we had supplied and she had planted at her mother’s boma. That was before she went off on a scholarship to University in the UK. She wanted to, but had no need to practice her English, which was perfect, pronouncing her vowels the way the posh English might. This young woman had shaved her head smooth and her skin shone with the glow of youth under the traditional oil, or maybe lotion she had applied. On each cheek she had the circular burn-scars that girls often make using bent, red-hot wire. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke, the whites gleaming and clear.  Her teeth were even, with no traditional frontal gaps caused by early removal. A single hole in each ear, drilled with an Acacia thorn, held white and red, square earrings. Around her neck was a beaded chocker made with the same red and white beading. In the vehicle and while showing off her mother’s trees, whenever she was quiet, she showed a demeanour of confidence, serenity and happiness with where she was in her life. It is so seldom seen! She is using her degree to benefit Maasai women; to empower and to motivate. She too is one of the gems of Africa.