Sunday bird blogging

We will return to our usual songbirds, gritty cityscapes, and endless window reflections next week, when my rib will hurt less and my dreams will be less vivid.

In the meantime, here's another semi-surreal photo, of a stork taking off from one of the grassy river islands in Zambia. It's not very sharp, which is why I didn't include it with the other Africa pictures I posted in April, but today the blurriness suits my mood and makes this landscape and that bright bird seem like something I only dreamed about, long ago, in another country.

How the land remembers the river

Downstream, inside the Lower Zambezi National Park, and not that close to the water's edge, it's still left its mark.

So I lied

I thought I didn't get many clear pictures of the surreal eroded red landscape of Zambia, but I've found some more I want to share. These are the eerie riverbanks, where you can see tree roots almost completely exposed to the air, and trees that have died as a result, toppling into the water. Click to see better.

Impalas

This is probably the end of Africa, except for some bird pictures I'll post on the usual Sundays. I overlooked this picture at first because it wasn't tack sharp, as the serious photographers say, but it captures some of how Zambia felt sometimes, as though the world was brand new and we were the first to see it.

More children in the village

Some of the last batch of photos from Zambia.

Holiday flashback

I am still going through Africa pictures. I've already picked out most of the good ones, but there are still a few I like that I'd overlooked.

So here's a bonus picture for the holiday weekend -- three young waterbucks in Lower Zambezi National Park peering through the grass at the interlopers. It's not super sharp, but I love those three faces behind the tall grass.

Sunday bird blogging

A goliath heron, on an island in the Zambezi River in Zambia.

I like how his ringed green eye complements the colors of his surroundings. Otherwise, he doesn't exactly blend in.

Leaving Zambia

This morning we're flying to Lusaka, and then back to Johannesburg. There were several elephants grazing in the bush by the lodge's airstrip, and a family of warthogs trotting across the tarmac.



Another elephant family, with a very young baby, came out as our truck stopped, and it was a magic moment. After so much wildlife, so many elephants, it was the perfect coda.

Then our plane arrived, roaring down the airstrip. Mama elephant trumpeted indignantly and hustled the baby out of there. Goodbye, Zambia.

Goodbye, Africa.

Paul

No picture here, just a story.

I noticed him when I was walking through the corn field on the way to the school. I had fallen behind the group and the children holding my hands were tugging at me to go faster, and I caught a glimpse of a boy sitting alone on the ground, watching us go by. I had an impression that he was crippled, but didn't really see him clearly.

Later, after the visits to the school and the orphanage, when everyone was milling around outside and taking photos, I saw him coming down the hill. He couldn't walk; his legs were folded underneath him and he moved forward by swinging his hips one side at a time. His right arm ended above the elbow, without a hand.

It had taken him all that time to catch up with us, and I walked over and asked him his name.

"Paul," he said shyly.

"Hi, Paul." I told him that my name was Kathleen and I came from New York, in America. I thanked him for letting us visit his village. I shook his left hand, and told him that I was very happy to meet him.

And he gave me such a radiant smile it pierced my heart. I hadn't done anything more than I had done with the other children; in fact I had done less.

I didn't take his picture. This was just a reflex; I would never take a picture of a disabled child in New York, so of course I wouldn't take one in Zambia. He wasn't on display like the wildlife. But in fact getting their pictures taken and seeing their digital selves was such a treat for all the other children in the village, it probably would have been an even bigger one for Paul, one way in which he could have been like all the other children there. It was the one gift I could have given him -- I'm not Angelina Jolie, I can't adopt him and give him a new life and have him seen by the finest doctors -- and it didn't even occur to me until much later that I could have, should have, done it.

Instead what I have is that smile, the gift that he gave me, I who already have so much.

I've promised myself that I'm going to be worthy of it.

More pictures of the children

Village children

Sausage tree

Really, that's what it's called.

What else would you call them? Those are actually the fruits of this peculiar tree, not some tasty cured meats that someone hung from the branches to keep them away from the hyenas.

Up close, the "sausages" are some kind of potato-like tuber. We'd seen several of these trees before but this was my first opportunity to get a good picture, so I stood underneath the tree and aimed up. And after narrowly escaping getting conked on the head by several falling sausages, I decided that the picture above was quite good enough.

Dancer

The feet of the one of the women dancing. Those are rattles attached to her ankles.

Orchestra seating

Some of the seats around the small stage where the dancers and musicians performed. Each one was a different shape and design.

Petronella

Petronella was our guide through the cultural village, taking us to present ourselves to the village headman, taking us through the houses and explaining the rituals, and here, describing a magic talisman in the museum.

School

The school principal met with us in his small cinderblock office, full of stacks of books, with charts tracking the students' progress taped to the walls, and then walked us around the grounds, where the foundations for a new building are slowly being built. The energy and enthusiasm just pours out of him; he seems completely unfazed by the enormous challenges of his job.

Like having to worry about his students being killed on the way to school in the morning. This school, like the one in Zimbabwe, is seriously overcrowded. Classes have to start at 7 in the morning to accommodate two shifts of students, and it's dangerous for children to be out walking so early when there are so many animals around. When the new school buildings are completed, he will be able to start classes later, and it will be safer for the children.

The determination to get an education is awe-inspiring; there are children who walk fourteen kilometers in both directions to come to school (and risk being eaten by crocodiles along the way). It makes me want to smack certain teenage girls of my acquaintance upside the head until they realize how privileged they are to have an education available for the taking.

(And it's disheartening to compare to the current state of affairs in the United States, where one of our greatest strengths, good public education, is now regarded as one more commodity to be privatized, one more pillar of big bad government to be undermined and abolished and starved into mediocrity.)

Dishes

Chickens investigating a pan of dirty dishes, maybe hoping to find some interesting scraps.

Which probably explains why clean dishes are laid out to dry on racks like this.

Main street

Village life

We were actually visiting two villages. One, the Chiawa Cultural Village, is part of an effort to demonstrate and preserve aspects of traditional Goba village life. There's a museum, a curio shop where most of the proceeds go back to the artisans, performances of traditional dances and games and rituals.




First, though, we visited the village down the road, a village where people actually live now. Children started to follow us around, at first a few, then a few more, then dozens. They grabbed our hands while we walked, and begged to have their pictures taken so they could admire their digital faces.

Morning on the Zambezi

The village was a 45-minute boat ride away. Or it would have been -- our boat broke down and we waited on one of the islands in the river until a backup arrived. We hadn't been nearly this far up the river before, and once you get past the new safari lodges going up, you see daily life by the river: men fishing, women doing laundry, children playing.

Everyone smiled and waved as we went by.