Fauna, Botanica and reading the signs…

Herons.
Jacaranda, Poinciana, bougainvillea, gum trees, frangipani, flame trees, casuarina, lots of succulents, lantana, spider lilies and flame lilies.
Skinks.
Lush and lovely terracotta earth coating everything – tinting fingernails.
Paint fading, stippled and chipped.
Heavy afternoon storm clouds.
Full-moon with occasional thunder.
Potholes.

Heavy soaking drenching downpours that make gutters gurgle and pulse with swirls of terracotta stained flood. Laughing as we dodge fat raindrops and inevitably end up wet to the skin, hair plastered across foreheads and a delightful tingling bought of shivering as a sudden breeze tickles wet skin.

Yesterday on our walk in to Bulawayo town centre we passed ‘zebra butchery’ and the ‘try again shop’… ‘Cloud form motors’ and ‘personality dry cleaners’… there are signs somehow not surprisingly pointing to ‘MARS’ and one later spied in Victoria Falls that simply and enigmatically read ‘& BEYOND’.

Later as evening fell, we passed a supermarket window where scores of mice (or rats according to Gilbert) frisked about the packaged food on display with gaiety and free reign. Up and down, scurrying along the safety grills that adorn every shop window like miniature workmen industriously & proficiently scampering along scaffolding.

~ by Margie Mackay on January 11, 2011.