Shadows of angels

26 Apr, 2015 - 08:04 0 Views

The Sunday News

A COUPLE of weeks back I talked about the European weather, how really teeth-chattering cold it can be in winter. But I forgot to mention something. That in these freezing winters, it is very rare to see birds singing on trees. This is a spectacle as rare as seeing the belly button of a frog, as the old proverb goes — yisibhono sexoxo.

The only birds I have seen in winter I think are ducks in some of the dams in parks. I even remember that this other day I was marvelling that the ducks even looked so comfortable in the freezing water, happily swimming this way and that, just as a person would be comfortable in a heated room.

Well, ducks are ducks, and they have their own natural body mechanism that makes them indifferent to the effects of cold temperatures. How I wish we human beings could also have this mechanism, which would make us say goodbye to cumbersome winter clothing like jerseys and heavy jackets and imbawula.

I remember one day when I was in the shower and accidentally turned on the cold water tap instead of the hot water one. Tjo! I nearly screamed. The coldness of the water on my shoulders was almost solid, as if I had been hit with a brick.

That is how cold water can get in these lands across the seas. You can’t even wash your hands in the cold water tap, always it is hot water. But I must say, that is when one learns of the relaxing quality of a hot shower, just as a cold one is too under the right circumstances.

And so, back to birds, and their absence from European landscapes during winter. Well, we all learnt about migration, how some animals can move from one country or continent to the other, looking for favourable weather or food systems.

And so I guess this is what happens to these birds that always fill the trees in the garden outside my window. I think in winter they fly to some far off sunny country or continent, and then when snow time is over here, hey presto, they are back in the garden and filling it with their songs.

I could have said that maybe they hibernate like frogs, like dig into the ground where they sleep out winter — but that would have made you laugh at me isn’t so?

And so, the reason I am talking about these intelligent migratory birds is that an idea suddenly struck me when I saw them appearing again at the beginning of this spring that Europe is now in.

There is this dove, actually two of them that now also grace the trees in our garden, which I can see from my third floor window. As you might know, doves look the same anywhere in the world. Maybe a bird expert can spot differences between African, Asian, European or American doves, but to my untrained eye, like I said, they all look the same, just as a page of bond paper is similar to another all around the world.

And then this thought suddenly leapt into my mind as I was watching this pair of doves. Here I mean amajuba, and not inkwilimba.
What if these doves in our garden here in Germany have once visited the garden in my home at Emakhandeni township in Zimbabwe, Africa, and actually seen me there too in the previous past, maybe picking pawpaws or mangoes from our fruit trees during their season?

What is Chris saying now? I know is the question that has leapt into your mind.
But like I said, yeah, we were taught at school that some birds can fly right around the world, even further than some airplanes can, and so, it is very possible that you can meet a bird in one continent and also meet it in another — if we can be able to recognise them.

But what if these migratory birds recognised us, for not recognising them does not mean they also are not able to recognise us?
So I have developed a deep respect for these birds in this garden, for one, they have a deep inborn knowledge of weather systems that is far much greater than ours, for let’s look at it, we don’t even know what the weather is going to be like next season — or let me say tomorrow, without consulting weather reports.

But the migratory bird knows, supreme in its ancient wisdom, see it fly high in the sky, almost like the shadow of an angel . . .

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