Day 77, Sewe-en-sewentig, Soixante-dix-sept

My heart was broken for the first time when I was eighteen years old, and so, instead of going to the University of Cape Town, where I had been accepted, it was decided that I would run away safely to a town 900km away, a little university town called Grahamstown. I would study there instead.  My departure was delayed for three weeks due to illness, and then after a train-journey of stops and starts and having to lug all my baggage (one suitcase was just for books) from the broken-down train to a bus which had finally arrived to rescue us from the middle of nowhere, I arrived late in the town itself.  And so it was dark by the time I reached the residence where I was to live, and I went to bed exhausted and quite lost and alone.

I awoke early to the loud squawks of geese being driven down the road, and thought, "Good grief, I'm really in the country!"   But when I looked expectantly out of my window I could see nothing.  It was very mysterious.  Later on that day I heard them again, and saw that this very large sound came from a much smaller bird than a goose, a drab brown bird with a beautiful sweeping line from back to end of beak.  It looked like a lackluster version of a Sacred Ibis, which I knew from the wetlands of Cape Town.

I found out that it was in fact a Hadeda Ibis, a sweet placid bird that builds nests made of sticks, which look like avant-garde sculptures, the proverbial early bird which catches the worm with its long probing beak, with a calm unhurried outlook on life.  So it is somewhat strange that this outwardly serene plodder over early morning lawns and freshly-dug vegetable patches has the most powerful voice of all the birds on the African continent.

The somewhat awkward Hadeda Ibis

Some people say it squawks like that because it is afraid of flying, others call it the "flying vuvuzela".  Since I first met this species, it has happily spread over the whole of South Africa, even Cape Town.

When the boys were little babies, they used to lie together on the changing mat and we would ask them all the animal sounds they knew, like, "What does the cow say?"  Two little voices would say "Hmmmmmoo!" and giggle at one another. "What does the dog say?" "Wuf!"  "What does the hadeda say?" "Ha-Haaaa!" And they would burst into contagious peals of laughter, that delicious chortling of the very young.

So the man-made thing for today is a poem I wrote a long time ago, when the boys were at pre-primary (or kindergarten, as it is called in America, the beautiful German word used by the inventor of early childhood education having stuck fast).  It was a lovely way to get to school, a long walk across playing fields and down a little hill to the school buildings surrounded by tall trees offering shade and sunshine. 

Silver Lining

Trailing snail-like after my fleet sons
Across the dew-soft morning field
Of early autumn green and rust,
Laden with school-bags and Monday blues,

Three shining rugby balls float suspended
On the cross-bar of the upright posts
Against a heavy somber sky.

Three plump hadedas, sleek-feathered,
Chat softly to each other
On their morning tea-break.

And the little illustration I did for the poem.