U is for -Update to Yesterday’s Post

I think WordPress is playing games with me today. Nowhere and Nohow could I find the post that I was updating –
and of course, there were no other posts starting with the letter U.
I do know that it was about a blogger I had discovered 10 years before.
After reading Eliza’s post, I wrote a post in 2012 titled I know this place
But shortly after I published the missing post in January 2022,
the blogger decided to no longer write in English, her second language.

******

UPDATE TO YESTERDAY’S POST

“Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another
“What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
C S Lewis

Firstly, apologies – I didn’t give you the link to the earlier post on Africa. If you read it through you will see what I missed. – Related articles – Musings from Africa.

While I was able to open the post in the morning, I sent a comment to the blogger –
“Many years later looking back on some of my earlier posts , I came across yours. In rereading, it is more attractive to me, but I think you have to be born there to appreciate its beauty, both in the people and the beauty that surrounds everyone. Are you still blogging? I can’t find anything from you for the last few years. I hope if you are no longer blogging it is because you found something else to do. With best wishes from far away New Zealand“

Imagine my delight to receive a response this morning –
Dear Judith, thanks for your kind words. I have indeed stopped blogging in English as it is my second language.
I have continued, with some periods of inactivity, to blog in Afrikaans (my first love). If you still read Afrikaans, even after years in NZ (as are some of my closest friends), my Afrikaans musings (and fiction) can be found at https://wordpress.com/posts/julioagrella.wordpress.com

I have yet to respond and tell her that I don’t speak Afrikaans.

Until tomorrow.

/

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Update to Yesterday’s Post

“Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another
“What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
C S Lewis

Firstly, apologies – I didn’t give you the link to the earlier post on Africa. If you read it through you will see what I missed. – Related articles – Musings from Africa.

While I was able to open the post in the morning, I sent a comment to the blogger –
“Many years later looking back on some of my earlier posts , I came across yours. In rereading, it is more attractive to me, but I think you have to be born there to appreciate its beauty, both in the people and the beauty that surrounds everyone. Are you still blogging? I can’t find anything from you for the last few years. I hope if you are no longer blogging it is because you found something else to do. With best wishes from far away New Zealand“

Imagine my delight to receive a response this morning –
Dear Judith, thanks for your kind words. I have indeed stopped blogging in English as it is my second language.
I have continued, with some periods of inactivity, to blog in Afrikaans (my first love). If you still read Afrikaans, even after years in NZ (as are some of my closest friends), my Afrikaans musings (and fiction) can be found at https://wordpress.com/posts/julioagrella.wordpress.com

I have yet to respond and tell her that I don’t speak Afrikaans.

Until tomorrow.

/

Question Time

When their flight was called he looked for the detective but didn’t see him anywhere.  If he had just been at the airport to upset him, then he had succeeded.  Because he hadn’t seen or heard from the detective for more than a year he had foolishly thought that he had given up and moved on.  Now he knew better.  How would he ever get this man off his back?

Sitting on the plane he mused over his problems, completely ignoring his companion who knew that the man he saw had upset him more than he let on and so she decided that she would find out just what was the problem. She would wait and choose her time.  Obviously, if they were going to be together for three weeks he couldn’t continue to ignore her.  She wanted to know what the problem was.

After the long flight, they arrived early in the morning in Cape Town.   He checked the arrivals, immigration and baggage carousel but there was no sign of Cranston, the detective.  Hopefully, they had left him behind at Heathrow.

But Jane was upset at his actions on the trip and the fact that she had been almost completely ignored for more than 12 hours.  She wasn’t used to being ignored and being a woman with her own means, she considered leaving him to go on the safari alone while she took off to one of the island resorts to relax in the sunshine.  She had made no commitment to this man and she was pretty angry at his treatment.

Having convinced himself that the detective had stayed behind, he brightened up a little and turned his attention to his companion.  Because he was so self-absorbed he couldn’t understand why she was upset and spent the next few hours convincing her not to leave.  They had both been to Cape Town before and had seen the sights so to placate her, he agreed to spend the rest of the day shopping.

They started at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront where could be found international and designer shops.  This was a new experience for him.  His wife hadn’t been interested in shopping, nor had she had the money to indulge.  He found following his companion, Jane into these fabulous stores was a great way to take his mind off his problems, and he quite liked carrying the bags with the fancy labels.  He thought how surprised his friends and colleagues would be if they could see him,

He had heard from his Travel Agent that a The Roundhouse a UNESCO Heritage Site was a place to visit and a great place to dine.  So they made their way there to rest after the shopping spree and to enjoy a late lunch,

By the time they arrived back at their hotel she appeared suitably appeased and she decided to let the questions wait for another day.  After an early dinner following what had been a long day, for the first time they retired to a shared room and bed.

The safari began early the next morning and as the days passed they began to relax in each other’s company. He wondered whether he had found a woman with whom to share the rest of his life.  They had many of the same interests, they both loved to travel to exotic places and as she had her own money, neither would be financially dependent on the other.

One night after another long day followed by dinner around a campfire, he decided to ask her if she thought they could be together permanently.  They had had rather more than usual to drink and after he asked the question she replied: “I think so, but you have to tell me why that man at the airport upset you so.”

Again, he responded that he was somebody that he knew in another time and place but this didn’t satisfy her.  So they went to bed with no decision on a shared future.  Later in the night, he awoke to find her sitting looking at him.  He decided to tell her about the detective and how the detective was sure that Duncan had murdered his wife.  Some of the comments led her to wonder whether the detective was in fact, correct.  This totally shocked her and long after he went back to sleep she sat thinking about what to do.

The next morning when he awoke she was gone.

Related posts :

Faraway Places;  It Begins; The Fickle Finger of Fate; Murderer vs Detective;

What Happens Next?

Who Shot Kukki Gallman?

I have just finished re-reading (for probably the 6th or 7th time) one of my all-time favourite books, “I Dreamed of Africa” by Kukki Gallman and posted a review on my other site Books and More Books.

Having finished the review and posted it, I decided to see what the world was saying about Kukki Gallman now.  And horrors – I read in the Guardian UK, that she was shot on a Sunday morning in April,

We are told that on that Sunday morning, April 23,  she was keen to inspect the ruins of Mukutan Retreat, her luxury tourist lodge, which had been set ablaze the day before. She drove there, accompanied by armed Kenya Wildlife Service Rangers and one of her scouts, to find total devastation. As she said, “Ash hung in the air like snowflakes.”

Many years of living with the threat of encroachment, poachers and occasional violence had taught her caution, so the visit was brief and, as she always did, Gallmann left by a different dirt track to the one she had driven in on.

Reaching the higher plains she found a felled tree blocking the route. The Rangers had finished moving the trunk when her scout called out to her, telling her there were three people approaching, but before she could turn to look the shooting started and she was hit in the lower abdomen as she sat in her Land Cruiser. She was hit again and three more shots hit the car before the Rangers chased away the ambushers.

Following the shooting, she spent a fortnight in hospital before being discharged to convalesce in her house in Nairobi. But she says she is not yet truly home.

She longs for Ol Ari Nyiro, “The Place of Dark Springs”, an 88,000-acre nature reserve in Kenya’s central highlands overlooking the Great Rift Valley, where her husband and son are buried.  In recent months this quiet, peaceful reserve has become embroiled in a violent struggle between the private landowners and the semi-nomadic herders. But though her wounds from the shooting are grievous she is determined to go back and fight.

“As soon as I’m allowed I will go back,” she says. Her doctors tell her that she is not yet strong enough and security officers advise her it is not yet safe, but “in my heart, I’m there,” she says.”

This is a different photo.
Not one of a trophy hunter having killed a defenceless animal but
one of a distraught Kukki with a killed elephant.

Sad story: Gallmann with an elephant killed by poachers on her land. Photograph: AFP

In earlier times, I followed Kukki and her daughter in their conservation quest and now feel sorrow for this woman who has faced sorrow in the loss of her husband and son and now could lose her beloved home or even her life.

Get well soon Kukki and go back to your home in the hopes that peace will return once again.

And always, Zig has a quote –

“It’s not how far you fall,
but how high you bounce that counts.”
― Zig Ziglar Author, salesman and
Motivational speaker 1926-2012

 

 

I Know This Place

Have you ever been transported by someone’s words to a place that you have never visited but somehow you feel you know?  Is it the magic of the words that so cleverly, and it seems effortlessly, transport you to another place?

Today when reading the blogs that I follow and some that I don’t, I stumbled across this post The View at the End of the Day on Vision and Verb.  This is the first time I have found and read anything here but reading those words, I could feel the heat; the still dry air; that wind clearing out the air in the house and the palpable longing for  ‘just an inch of rain’.   And in that moment I realised that the mark of a good writer is the ability to transport somebody to a place they have never been.  And in reading about it make them feel that they know the place and that they are there.  Eliza who wrote this post, has that magical ability.

Having never been to Africa I know of it only through stories and films.  One of my favourite books is that written by Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke.  This is the story of her life in Africa in the early part of the 20th Century.  Out of Africa was made into a film in 1985 starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep and the opening line from that movie “I had a farm in Africa” is imprinted on my mind.

However, Eliza obviously lives there and through her writing I will learn more of this distant, mysterious continent.  Thank you Eliza and please keep writing, describing your life and your country for us.

Related articles

• Musings in paradise (musingsfromafrica.wordpress.com)

A Life Being Well lived

“I learned what every dreaming child needs to know – that no horizon is so far you cannot get above it or beyond it.”
Beryl Markham, (26 October 1902 – 3 August 1986)  British-born Kenyan aviatrix, adventurer, and racehorse trainer.

I discovered Kuki Gallman when browsing in the airport bookstore for something to read on the long flight to London.  This was way back in 1996.

Kuki Gallman is an Italian writer and poet. Born in Treviso, Veneto, she moved to Kenya in 1972 with her second husband and son (from her first marriage) and is now a Kenyan citizen.

The book I discovered was “I Dreamed of Africa“ and this book was made into a film in 2000 starring Kim Basinger. In this her first book, Kuki Gallman tells of her ongoing fascination with Africa.  She tells of being given an essay to write when she was 12 years old.  The theme was what she wanted to do and be in 20 years time.   The teacher dismissed her essay with the words “Why did you have to write about Africa?”  Her response (copied verbatim from the book) “But I do want to live in Africa.  I do not want to stay here all my life.  One day I shall go to Africa.  I shall send you a postcard from there, signora in twenty years time.

Twenty years later, I did”.

Her book tells her story of traveling to Africa with her second husband,her son, Emanuele  and the two daughters he had with his late wife.  The two girls were sent home but Kuki, Paulo and Emanuele loved Africa and stayed.

The book tells of finding the perfect place to live and the dangers and thrills of setting up life in a totally different country, where they neither spoke the language or knew the local customs.

“Between 1972 and 1980 they acquired Ol Ari Nyiro, a 100,000 acre (400 km²) cattle ranch, on the edge of the Great Rift Valley, in Northern Kenya where they created the first ever anti poaching squad to protect the largest population of Black Rhino in Africa and large populations of elephants, buffalo and leopards. Kuki became deeply involved with conservation.”( Wikipedia).

Kiki  had a daughter in 1980.  Paolo, her husband had been killed  in an automobile accident shortly before the child was born.  He had decided to have a crib made for the new child and while bringing it home for their unborn baby was killed when a lorry crossed into his lane.  This was the first death.

Her son Emanuele was fascinated by and loved snakes.  Three years later (at only 17) he died of a snake bite while trying to extract viper venom for antiserum.

Kuki founded the Gallmann Memorial Foundation in honor of Paolo and Emanuele and has dedicated her life to saving the environment and wildlife of Kenya.  She still lives in Kenya with her daughter, Sveva Makena Gallman , who is also involved in conservation and helping African children preserve their heritage.

The second book, “A Night of Lions” I discovered a few months later.  This an illustrated collection of stories about the African land and people.  In reading this book you get the feel of her total love of the land and its people.

I strongly recommend both these books to you.  In particular, I loved “I Dreamed of Africa”.  It captured me from the outset and I hope it will capture you too.

“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance.
They awaken us to a new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.”
Flavia Weedn, American author and artist.

Photo – Steffan Foerster

Related Articles

• The rhino who refused to go quietly: Jeep full of rangers trying to sedate injured beast feel the full force of his anger (dailymail.co.uk)