Author: Admin

Reflecting on The A to Z Blogging Challenge

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I’m a spur of the moment kind of woman. This inclination has landed me in some sketchy situations, but it’s also brought me a lot of fun. My latest headlong plunge was into the A to Z Blogging Challenge for the month of April, a daunting prospect. My plate was already full as halfway through April, I was due in England’s Lake District to reconnect with an old school chum from my homeland Zambia after what felt like three entire lifetimes. Not only that, but I was in the midst of editing my memoir, Loveyoubye, which has been all consuming.

Well, I’m pleased to report that I rocked the A to Z Challenge! I completed all twenty-six letters with animals as my theme, from Antelope to Zsa Zsa (a friend’s cockatoo), always angling for some kind of discovery or personal connection to each particular animal. Four days into my visit to England, I veered a little from that theme, converting R is For Road Runner into a runner of another kind: me, charging across the expansive verdant fields of Lord Lowther’s estate after stealing one of his logs within sight of the magnificent Lowther Castle. And then in my blog U is For Unicorn, I recounted my search for records of my South African father’s attendance at Ayr Academy in Ayr, Scotland, closing with the unicorns in Scotland’s Coat of Arms.

Although it still takes me at least ten times as long as anyone else to write anything (I’m convinced of that) and I can hardly stand to broadcast any of my scribblings that haven’t been critiqued by at least four other writers, I’ve developed a couple of new writing muscles, might I say writing chops I didn’t have before. Thank you dear A to Z Challenge creators and those participants who visited my site, you made the next step in my writing journey possible.

Abandoned

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Twenty-three hours after I left home and wearing my trench coat and thermal leggings, I stumbled bleary-eyed from customs to baggage claim then down the corridor out into Manchester Airport waiting area. My visit to Joan was killing me. I’d decided that Donna would’ve checked my flight and seen that it had been delayed. She’d be waiting for me. She had to be.

She wasn’t. It seemed the only people waiting for my flight were men clad in black holding up signs with names printed on them in large letters. There were no women. I stood there. Don’t panic. I could do this. Feeling light-headed I started to read the signs. You just never knew. One man lifted his placard in my direction as if to tempt me: MR. PETERS, it said. Giving him a nervous grin, I started toward the doors leading out into Manchester when, to my relief, I saw a sign down the way that said “Meeting Area.” Phew. That’s where she would be, tired of standing by the gate.

It wasn’t to be. Just two men, sitting on a bank of seats. Okay. I was officially screwed. No phone numbers, no way to contact either Joan or Donna. No actual physical address. What an idiot I was. I sank into one of the seats, lack of sleep making me feel as if someone had smeared Vaseline over my mind. Think. Okay, I would take a train up to Morland and ask around the village if someone knew where Joan lived. It was a small enough village, right?

I sighed. I couldn’t do this right now. I was just too tired. So first thing, I’d spend the night in Manchester, get some sleep then head out in the morning. But meanwhile, I’d post a message on Facebook for both Joan and Donna. One of them was bound to see it. Maybe by the morning . . . I opened my computer. No juice. No adapter. Luckily, I found one in the concession shop, and posted, in small letters, no punctuation, too tired: “joan and donna I’m here in manchester airport, where are you help.” Later, I would read an answering post from my son who lives in South Africa that said, “Is Mummy lost in England. Shall I send out a search team?” I got a kick out of that one. But meanwhile, I had to convert my American dollars into English pounds and head into the wild blue yonder.


Making Up My Mind

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I had to go to England to visit Joan. I couldn’t lie. And nothing had popped up to save me from spending two weeks with a virtual stranger from the past. To cinch the deal, Donna would be picking me up at Manchester Airport on her way up from Surrey to join Joan and me for a couple of days in Morland, a two-hour drive away. Joan and Donna had already visited each other several times, over the past year or so; they’d broken the ice, reconnected, had tea together, caught up. Gulp. I would be the new kid . . . well, not quite, but you know what I mean.

Right up until the day before I left, I was frantically trying to finish up a whole month’s worth of daily blogging (an A to Z Blogging Challenge I’d taken on for the month of April, which I would be posting during my two weeks with Joan. Yes, I know some kind of unconscious need to distance myself from what was to come?). I finally gave up with three blogs left to write.

I only bought a trench coat, a pair of black thermal leggings, and two sweaters—or as we used to say, jerseys—in concession to the cold weather I would be encountering; I’d be going from between 60 and 70 degrees to around 40. And rain. Lots of it. Joan said to pack light; she had plenty of warm clothes. Would we be the same size? Were we before? The photo I posted yesterday looks like it. Why can’t I remember? It was hard to tell from her current photos if she’d changed. To tell the truth, she’d grown better looking, I couldn’t really tell her size. And Donna, all I had seen of her was a Facebook headshot of her and her husband, Ian. She did not look familiar at all. A quick aside here. I asked Joan if I should bring something dressy, because I didn’t “do” high heels, anymore. No, we’d manage, she said, but why on earth did I not wear high heels? Oh, oh.

With a feeling of inevitability along with my usual fear that I’d forgotten something, like my passport, which I’d done a couple of times before on other trips abroad, I boarded the plane wearing my thermal leggings and carrying my trench coat. I’d only managed a scant four hours of sleep. Nine hours later after a five hour layover in Chicago’s O’Hare airport, there was a problem with the plane. It would take another six hours and a plane change before we would be ready to leave for Manchester. Panic. I had no way of letting Joan and Donna know my plane had been delayed. Yes, in my reluctance to commit to the trip, I hadn’t bothered to get telephone numbers. All I had were their email addresses, but there was a problem with my email account and I couldn’t send notification of my dilemma. I knew it. I should’ve lied. I should’ve cancelled. The trip was jinxed.

Avoiding Joan

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In June of last year, I booked my trip to visit Joan on April 17, 2012, in Morland in England’s Lake District and instantly regretted it then put it out of my mind. I could cancel later. I mean I feel like I’ve lived three entire lifetimes since I last saw Joan, what on earth would we talk about? Would we even relate other than struggling to come up with names and events from the past? I am not into nostalgia.  It’s stifling. Nonetheless, here’s a photo of Kitwe High, during our time there.

The last time I saw Joan was a week after my wedding when she stepped in at the last moment as my bridesmaid after I had a falling out with the girl I’d originally chosen. At the time, Joan was living in Mufulira, another small mining town twenty-eight miles north toward the Congo, where she’d been for a couple of years. A week after the wedding, she had to return to the scene of the crime when it was discovered that there had been a mix-up with our signatures on the official document that had her married to best man, Chris, and me and my chosen one still unattached. Should’ve been a sign to babes-in-the woods me and the beloved, eh? We signed in the right place, she remained single (for the next eight years) and we moved on, me to have a son and her to take the trip to Europe we’d planned together.

Back to my impending visit. Along with Joan, I would also be reconnecting with Donna Trott, who used to live in Itimpi, a tiny new community nine miles from Kitwe, along the road to Chingola. She and I played hockey and softball together. Her mother, “Ma” Lang was the coach. All I remember about Ma Lang was her intensity, and that she always seemed to be dressed in a hockey skirt. During our school years, I spent quite a few weekends at their house in Itimpi, which was surrounded by bush and lit by Tilley lamps at night. I can still smell the thick raw and strangely comforting odor of the paraffin, and see the flame’s dull yellow light flickering against the walls, still see Donna’s gentle giant of a father hunched at the end of their double bed picking softly on his banjo. Local natives would come to the back door where Ma Lang sold them mielie meal and sugar. Donna and her husband (who is one of the coaches for England’s cricket team), live part of the year in New Zealand, and part of the year in Surrey, England. Her son is one of England’s premier cricketers.

So here I was a month before my trip and I had a decision to make. Cancel or go? Meanwhile, Joan, whose email address is JOANBKS all caps—Joan Bramwell, Kitchen, Savage; she’s been married twice—had been sending me a couple of emails here and there, “looking forward to your visit,” along with photos of her many trips back home to Africa, where her three sisters live, and declarations about how much she missed it. Oh-oh, I thought. I don’t miss Africa. What would we talk about?

Go or stay?

 

Finding Joan Revisited

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Joan is a childhood friend.  She’s the only childhood friend I’ve ever been able to find after all these years.  When you’re from Zambia when it was colonial Northern Rhodesia and everyone you ever knew has disappeared, you go a little nuts when you find someone from ye old school days: St. John’s Convent School and Kitwe High. Here’s the two of us in front of one of the single-quarters units up near the Mine Club. We must’ve been around fifteen or so.  Check out my skirt.Where I found Joan was on “The Great North Road,” an online forum created in 1996.  Here’s the lead-in: “In the heart of central Africa, a frontier spirit engendered a hardy breed.  We shared a very special time and place. Through this medium we’ve been able to reconnect again and to share our memories of the remarkable Northern Rhodesian experience. “The diaspora of Northern Rhodesians has scattered our small stock far and wide across the planet—from South Africa to Iceland, Hong Kong to Zimbabwe, North America to Australia, the British Isles to New Zealand . . . Northern Rhodesians Worldwide.”

Kinda cool, huh?  Along with “Remember When” lists—remember when you could get a Fanta grape and two Wicks bubble gum all for sixpence?” there were black and white photographs of skinny, wild-eyed boys perched on those rocks in the Kafue river with a question mark above the middle, bat-eared one, anyone remember his name?

Funny thing, I’m not big on nostalgia and I couldn’t wait to emigrate to America, but finding Joan jacked me up enough to tell anyone who’d listen I’d rediscovered a childhood friend.  So? But you don’t understand . . . So sweet after all this time.  All the reasons why I wanted so badly to get out of Africa and all the shitty decisions I’ve made in my life dulled by time.  Instead, all the good stuff came rushing back: the wildass chances we took, hitchhiking to Luanshya in the middle of the night down a bush road after sneaking out of my bedroom window; whizzing down the “foofie” slide at Rhodwins Resort—a thick metal cable the boys had strung across the crocodile-infested Kafue river—hanging onto a metal cylinder the size of a toilet paper roll; the snogging in the back of the Astra and Rhokana Cinemas with some “talent” from Chingola or Luanshya or Mufulira; the white sweaters worn back to front over waists cinched to 18 inches.  We thought we were so hot.

What I mostly remember about Joan was that she and both her sisters looked like different versions of Ava Gardner, all olive skinned and sloe-eyed.  She was not athletic, though she tried, just couldn’t see the ball coming, some spatial thing, I later learned.  I was into everything our little bush town offered: ballet, swimming, softball, hockey and basketball, but still we hung together. She was a no-nonsense type, not one to chase the boys, never wanted to get married.  I, on the other hand . . . She was my bridesmaid at my too-young wedding.

Skype, you know, the online phonecam deal revealed she’s still gorgeous and still loving her “Harry Champers,” (champagne).  Oh, and she’s been married twice.  Hah!  When she saw my shoulder-length hair, she said, Oh, you California girls. Too funny.  She lives in a place called The Cobbles, Morland, in the Lake District of England.  Carrying her laptop, screen facing out with its built-in camera, she took a walk down the lane in front of her house.  With the sound of a gurgling brook as an accompaniment, “we” headed to the local pub where she called out to a man standing in front,  George, say hello to my friend. He obliged. I yelled back my hello.

I’m off to see her in April, next year.  We’re going up to spend some time in Scotland, land of my dad’s folks.  She remembered, told me how much my parents had meant to her after she lost hers in a head-on collision on the road between Mufulira and Nkana when she was twenty.  To make it worse, she was the first one on the scene after the crash. More on Joan and my life pre-America after my visit.

 

Face It

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I was going to start blogging about my trip to England, but I had this insight today while having my teeth cleaned that I want to explore. It’s about facelifts and all things to do with enhancing one’s image. It all started with a Facebook posting yesterday I flashed by. It went something like this . . . “face it ladies, if you had the money/you’ve reached that certain age/low self-esteem. etc. wouldn’t you have “work” done?”

Now, of course, this is a debate that’s been going on for ages and I’ve weighed in on many forums regarding the subject: mostly ambivalence (I mean, women I know and love have had work done, and I don’t fault them) but I also like the idea that you’ve earned your wrinkles, that you should wear them proudly. You notice I didn’t say I embrace the latter. Because along with those wrinkles comes invisibility and less favorable treatment. I’ve felt it. And even though I ascribe to the principle that the last third of life is about reflection and contemplation, I also rail against the loss of my tight skin. And then today, it just hit me. Simply put, it takes energy to focus on what’s no longer there, a focus that could be put to better use working on being more of the self I have, little suitcases under my eyes and all.

Blogging Fool

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F is For Foolish, as in foolish me. You see I’m about to launch into the 2012 WordCount Blogathon for the month of May and I’m using the A to Z challenge format to get me going again (that was fun, if a little stressful).

I found out about the blogathon on Julie Farrar’s delightful blog, Travelling Through. I thought it would be a terrific way to document my trip back to the past via England where I paid a visit to my old chum, Joan, from our lives in Zambia. (She’ll be commenting, who are you calling old, you just watch and see). Plus, Michelle V. Rafter, who hosts the blogathon has theme days: May 7th “Five movies that have inspired my blogging,” don’t know about that, but hey, I’m game. May 14th, “Guest Post Exchange Day.” May 21st, Haiku Day. I love  haikus, never written one. But I shall. May 23rd, finish the phrase–“If I started blogging today I would . . .” Hmmm. Stay tuned. Hopefully, I can stay the course  while finishing my final edit on my memoir, Loveyoubye.  And everything else.

Z is for Zsa Zsa

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I’m ending the A to Z Challenge with twenty-eight-year old Zsa Zsa, the magnificent, who belongs to friends of mine. She’s a White Cockatoo, endemic to islands in North Maluku, Indonesia. Another name for the bird is Umbrella Cockatoo, because of their large and striking semicircular crest, which appears when the bird is surprised. In Zsa Zsa’s case it appears when someone messes with her toys, or when she’s doing the stomp. Pounding the kitchen floor with first one then the other claw, pigeon-toed like (or in her case, cockatoo-toed like),  she bobs and sways from side to side, crest fanning like she’s getting ready for take-off. My friend calls it getting down with her bad self. Damn funny. I couldn’t get the video my friend has of this performance in time for this post, instead here’s The Zsaz perched in front of a mirror: her favorite place. She never saw one she didn’t love.

 

 

 

Y is For Yellow Animals

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I love the color yellow. For one thing it was my dad’s favorite, which then became my favorite as a child. Over the years I flirted with this color and that, pink, white, baby blue, red, and green, but yellow always stayed in the background, like a patient lover waiting for my return. And return I do again and again, because yellow is all about sunshine and cheer and illumination. And for animals sometimes it’s about warning away predators by adopting nature’s version of road racing’s Caution flag. For others, matching the color of the plants you live on is a good way to avoid predators and/or deceive prey. Like the yellow crab spider, pictured below.

Caterpillars are often yellow as well, regardless of the color of the butterfly it will someday become. The snake-like larva below combines enlarged eyespots with bright yellow coloration in an effort to dissuade predators from considering it for their next meal.

Not all bright yellow frogs are poisonous but a significant number are, like the one pictured below, a tropical poison dart frog. Soft-bodied and small, these tropical frogs are preyed upon by a huge number of reptiles, birds and mammals. Being bright yellow warns potential predators to beware of the possibility of poisoning – a threat that works whether the yellow frog is poisonous or not.

Yellow is not a common color for snakes, who rely heavily on ambush predation as a hunting technique. Most of the yellow snakes people are familiar with are actually albinos bred to satisfy demand from pet owners who appreciate the beauty of a yellow snake, patterned or otherwise.

The wide variety of wholly or partially yellow birds, combined with their naturally beautiful range of movement, makes them popular subjects for amateur and professional photographers alike. The bird below, a type of woodpecker known as the Yellow-Shafted Flicker, is caught here just as it leaves its nest somewhere deep in an American forest.

X is For Xantus Humming Bird

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I love hummingbirds. We mostly have the ruby-throated kind around here. But I was delighted to find this gorgeous emerald one pictured below, the Xantus hummingbird. Native to southern Mexico’s Baja Peninsula and Jacques Cousteau Island off the coast of Baja California Sur, this little darling is named after John Xantus de Vesey , a Hungarian zoologist.

I then went on a search for other hummingbirds, hoping to find one in Britain, seeing as how this is my last day in the country, it would be appropriate. To my dismay there are no humming birds to be found in this country. But then I came across something even better.  Britain’s answer to the hummingbird: a moth!  This immigrant from Europe and north Africa is not just any old moth, however, but the magnificent hummingbird hawk moth, one of the most remarkable cases of mistaken identity in the animal world. Every year many people are taken aback at the sight of what appears at first to be a hummingbird hovering at the flowers. The creature’s wings beat so rapidly that they produce an audible hum and can be seen only as a haze. The darting movement from one flower to the next with a long proboscis uncoiled completes the illusion of a hummingbird. Remarkable.