Ahem
The weather, previously sunny, had suddenly turned windy and wet as I took the coach for Heathrow to get the flight to Malawi. Was this a harbinger of the following fortnight? Well yes, it was. At the Toleza farm it was cool, windy, and cloudy enough to merit the lighting of a fire in the lounge of the farmhouse. The farm was in mid-harvest, with jostling activity in the fields, the storage area, and around the farm buildings. Much of the work was around the clock, and the night workers competed with the nearby hyenas for emissions of the most piercing midnight noises as they hulled and brought the maize by hand onto large plastic sheets to be bagged up later.
While in Malawi, I admired the musical and singing skills of local children’s village choirs competing in an event organised in the farm, then walked around some rock paintings, or pictographs, in the boulder-strewn Chongoni Mountain Forest near Dedza. There are over 125 rock painting sites in the area, dating back from around 2,000 to 10,000 years ago. Over two separate visits I saw five of the more significant sites with paintings of geometric figures and patterns, hunting implements, and forest animals, at some sites painted in red (a mixture that included animal blood), and at others in white or black. The red paintings, which although faded, are clearly visible, date from the Late Stone Age. They are thought to have been made by the Bathwa (Akafula) hunter-gatherers who lived there, and who might or might not have been a pygmy tribe. One account suggests that they were depicted by women. Whatever else, these and other similar prehistoric pictographs and hieroglyphs are the first recorded examples of conscious human art, made by hand.
The white paintings, which required an energetic 45-minute clamber by hand and foot up and down the largest of the Chentchere Hills scattered by massive granite boulders, were painted by the Chewa tribe 2,000 years ago at a cave-like hollow now treated as holy and spiritual by the elders of the tribe. The space is under a ceiling created by the underside of a vast and flat single boulder (megapebble) on which is depicted at least twelve separate forest animals including the giraffe, lion, and elephant, and the scorpion, gecko, and centipede, as well as an imaginative picture of clouds with black dots, representing rain. In their tribal celebrations and ceremonies, members of the Chewa tribe dress as the pictured animals and perform their spiritual tribal dance, which later become known as the gule wamkulu. The painting of the dots of rain were there to help the priests call on the spirits to get the rains to come.
Never mind the rain, I encountered the tail end of a heatwave back in the United Kingdom, and went straight into dog-sitting Maisie in Burgess Hill overnight before going up to London with Jessie to see the excellent West End production of Lionel Bart’s revived musical masterpiece Oliver! Then, joined by Ella, we went over to the Albert Hall to see the band Wilco after having a very unusual dinner at the Speedboat Bar, a trending Bangkok street food place in Soho, where Gwen joined us, making the dinner a nice Father’s Day celebration. Wilco did not disappoint, although I hadn’t seen them in many years and so knew not what to expect. I have always liked their music and recognised much of their set list, but for my liking they are still too keen on self-indulgent song endings that descend unnecessarily into a protracted and deafening polychronic chaos. However, the handy skills of drummer Glen Kottche were impressive. He looked ready to expire by the end of the show, whereas the veteran Jeff Tweedy seemed comfortable and settled in the august interior of the Albert Hall, ready to go on long into the night.
A second heatwave was supposed to have started just as I prepared to sit down in the front garden of Michelham Priory in the village of Upper Dicker to watch a live evening performance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, written over four hundred years ago and nearly four hundred years after the priory was built in 1229. Although there was no tempest to mimic the play, “the clouds methought would open, and show riches ready to drop upon me”. In other words, the weather turned out to be darkly threatening, cloudy, and shiveringly cold. I had not brought suitable clothing with me and so had to rearrange the dog blanket to put around my hands and feet.
Jessie and Jurrat arrived on Saturday evening for dinner and stayed overnight, leaving Jaxon with us while they flew to Vancouver, Canada the next morning. Before leaving, Jurrat and Jessie had given me more Father’s Day presents – a print of a 17th century map of the many French paths to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and very useful extendable manual grabber, perfect when driving outside the UK for paying car park and toll machines and collecting the tickets when there is no one in the passenger seat to do so. I can also use it to kick-start my new voluntary job of litter-picking while dog-walking. But who will then hold my hiking sticks and the dog-leads?
With all hands on deck,
Lionel