It is the season of posies, bonbons and extravagances like breakfast in bed. Or a child’s endearing drawing. None of that is to be sniffed at. Any token of affection offered when the world’s afire is a sign to cling to even if it means a few crumbs in the covers.
With customary tulips and chocolates well beyond reach during our years in sub-Sahara Africa, I learned to improvise – like a Sunday afternoon tea in a thatch gazebo beside an avocado grove; perched on a rise in the Blue Mountains overlooking the Rift Valley and the Nile river. You might add a gold mine mountain named Zani on the horizon. (This is beginning to sound like lines from a Malcolm Lowry novel.) None of this, however, is on sale at your Carrefour, Spar or Costco.
But there came a day when I was all out of trump cards. We lived at the edge of the Kalahari better known for its chiggers, camel-thorn scrub, and the starkness of the desert. Though someone had once told me in passing that there were flamingos known to settle on ponds at the daybreak edge of town. This would be my Mother’s Day wager.
A flock of greater flamingos – distinguished by pronounced black beaks – has
settled on a lake likely in East Africa given the hills in the background. The pink
cast of flamingos comes from their diet of algae found in alkaline lakes. Today,
flamingos breed in a shrinking belt of pans and lakes across south central Africa,
but migrate even as far east as the west coast of India. photo credit:Nick115
The gravel track led us out past scattered dwellings ending at a hurricane fence. Beyond lay some city installation. The gate was unlocked. On passing through, it became clear that we had ventured onto some settling ponds. Or, to put it more plainly, we had arrived, on Mother’s Day morning, at the town’s sewage treatment plant.
On the most distant ponds, the ones nearest the river, there was a hint of color and some distant bird cry. Walking hand-in-hand in that direction along the retaining berms, we soon learned that there was a host of other creatures present – under foot. Scores of colonies of fire ants, attracted by abundant moisture, had established colonies encircling the ponds and soon enough asserted their prior claim to these premises by leaving welts around our unprotected ankles. This may have been what the hurricane fence tried to tell us. On Mother’s Day morning, we had landed ourselves in the middle of an army of fire ants.
Undeterred, we proceeded by tiptoe between the colonies, arriving finally within sight of the promised scene. There, a cotton candy vision, hundreds of pink flamingos mirrored in the ponds, had been patiently waiting with a command performance. It would have been worthy of inclusion in a recent smash Hollywood movie.
I have since learned that some inventive lexicographer has concocted a collective for these birds: a ‘flamboyance’ of flamingos. But mothers everywhere know that you don’t arrive at this beatific vision without passing by the town settling ponds and running a gauntlet of fire ants.
I love reading your stories. Madume go botlhe
Great story, Jon. Made me muse about some of my own adventures.
Love it!!! Great that you were willing to endure the fire ants in order to see the beautiful flamingos!
Great story Jonathon. Last October we traveled back to Kenya to visit one of my students who came to Bethel College and returnred as a teacher. We did not see flocks of flamingos but we saw many and observed their wonderful dance. Thanks for the story.
Thank you for sharing. I thought Flamongos were in Florida! Have a great summer.