Snow in Africa

People who aren't African's tend to think of Africa as a hot and dry and dusty place. Indeed we often get "foreign" visitors who toast is "dust in Africa". If you watch the news, any time you like there is some story lurking there of famine in Africa. Pictures of starving children are likely to tug at the world's heartstrings and, thank heaven, produce funds to provide food for these mites.

Along with the vast migrations of the Serengeti in Kenya, gorilla's in the equatorial rain forest and young thugs in pickup's committing horrific crimes and violence are iconic staples of how the rest of the world sees us. Just as we see the First World as a golden shining place of riches and better, safer lives. True but not the whole story.

A picture that does not commonly spring to mind is of snow in Africa. A friend phoned this morning to say that she wasn't going out as the snow that has fallen in parts of South Africa has snowed her in and besides it is too damn cold as our houses are really not built with this kind of weather in mind. She was quite grumpy but said her children who have never seen snow before were having a great time outside with snow ball fights and building snowmen and sledding on her kitchen trays. In the mean time while it isn't snowing here in Harare Zimbabwe and is not likely to (we would really know that there was something seriously wrong with the worlds weather systems if it snowed here) it is fresh and cold.

Elephants in the air

Terri says that she loves the idea of elephants in the air......

I had such a laugh at this .......

If you live in my part of Africa then you will know all sorts of things about elephants. For instance that they can move incredibly quietly through the bush and can appear seemingly out of nowhere a few feet from one. It can be alarming because African elephants are enormous, and they can be a tad unpredictable with fiery tempers and protective instincts and little love or trust for mankind.

You will know that they are both poached to the edge of extinction and over populating their remaining "protected" ( I use the word ironically - poaching is big money and no where is safe) territories. Over population means they are literally eating themselves out of house and home. They are killing themselves. Again anyone who lives in this part of Africa has seen the destruction on the flora that elephants wreak on their stately passage from here to there.

Most of us have watched baby elephants play and teenagers practice charging. We have fitted both our hands into an elephant footprint. We have seen their matriarchal families move in groups through the bush, stomachs rumbling. We have heard their vocalizations, which low range sounds can carry for hundreds of miles ... or so it is thought. If you are really lucky you will have seen them move at night, ivory shining in the moonlight, the impression of grey ghosts belied by the munching and swishing of grasses.

You will know also that sometimes you don't see them at all, for they disappear like grey ghosts in thick scrub and can be completely hidden only a few feet away, but even if you don't see them, chances are you will smell them.

The tang of elephant hanging vividly in the air......

Elephants are awesome (NOT in some teenagery use of that word) they are awe inspiring, terrifying, wonderful, amazing, extra ordinary, beautiful.

But it doesn't often, if ever, occur to me that elephants in the wild are not an experience that people who don't live in Africa share, that in a way I take elephants for granted. After all my husband was held up for an hour on his road trip back from Lusaka yesterday because he had to wait for the elephants on the road to move off.