These are the clouds my friends

In my family, it's my sister Anna who is the cloud expert. From her studies in climatology she knows the names of all the different types, and she knows the science behind how they're formed and how each type behaves. She's even a card-carrying member of some dubious organisation called the Cloud Appreciation Society.

While I don't have any of these formal qualifications, I think that I too am a cloud lover. Not just the big fluffy white ones that look like animals or toasters or things - though these certainly are amazing (I'm pretty sure they're called cumulonimbus). I love too the dark layer way out over the ocean with diagonal lines coming down, where the rain is falling, though to my eyes it appears a stationary grey mass. I love the storm clouds advancing from the south on a summer afternoon; a swirling blackness devouring the sky, their arrival heralded by the mad delight of leaves and litter dancing in the street. I love it when there are two types of clouds in the sky at once - the low lying wispy ones scudding lightly along so close you feel you could grab hold of them, and the higher, more aloof ones which float by at their own dignified  pace. I love the collection of squiggles, lines and shapes stretching away to the horizon that can make a look up to the sky such a wonderfully distracting experience.

And then there's the way the clouds dance around with the sun, veiling and unveiling, changing colour and shape as I watch. Oh, the sunrises and sunsets I've seen made a thousand times more spectacular by the blushing and ever-changing clouds. A sky-show that kings and emperors could not but be impressed by.

Considering how much beauty and diversion clouds bring to the world, I think they've had a rough trot in the English language. The connotations of clouds are always negative. What's all this about people being "under a cloud of suspicion" when they've been implicated in bad behaviour? Why don't you hear of happy people, whose life is just falling into place described as being "under a cloud of contentment"? Clouded judgment- bad. Head in the clouds - bad. I suppose there is cloud nine, which is undoubtedly a good place to be, but that begs the question - are the other eight clouds all evil?

It seems like we've forgotten that clouds are the carriers of rain, a replenishing and vital part of the cycle of life on earth. Maybe it's got something to do with our simplistic black and white view of things. Sun is good, rain is bad, nothing in between. It could be that clouds, in their never ending, always changing complexity and diversity, give us all the shades of grey.

Rain in the distance, Grampians VIC

Wispy goodness, Grampians

A flock of sunset clouds, Grampians VIC

Mallacoota, VIC

Mallacoota

East coast Tassie

Sunset on the Nullarbor

Sunset, Lucky Bay WA

This is what happens when you camp alone.

Just after Easter I went up to Barrington Tops for a few days of exploring. The first day’s hike was all uphill, ascending a sharp escarpment. I went hard, sweating out the accumulated frustrations of a busy day to day life. By nightfall I was exhausted and slept dreamlessly.

The second day was mellower. The sky was clear, the air crisp and the trail meandered along the plateau, passing plains, circling swamps and crossing creeks. There was nobody around and I didn't mind that.

That chilly night after eating I sat by the campfire. The creek was bubbling quietly nearby and I gazed into the dancing flames. My thoughts wandered, following threads of memories, ponderings and whirling dreams. Like the flickering of the fire, my mind leapt from here to there following a course of no discernible meaning. I turned around to get the fire’s warmth on my back and looked up into the night sky, aglow with shimmering stars. Looking into the universe, looking through time.

I kept up this slow rotation, to stay warm front and back. Alternately looking down into the fire and up into the stars it occurred to me that whether you’re looking at the small scale world of the senses –  the here and now of this body walking the earth  – or you’re pondering the big picture of the universe, God and love, this life truly is a wondrous thing. 

Oh, the night sky. (Not my photo. From http://www.ozsky.org/Gallery.asp )

A trip to the market

With what can I compare the marketplace in Zomba? Perhaps a giant festival, but like no festival to which I have ever been. This festival had no central meeting area, but many hundreds of alleyways, corridors and crannies, all packed with people with something to celebrate. It was difficult to move between them as they chatted, laughed and sang. There was music, loud and crackly, screeching from scratched-up cassette players. A man in a red Liverpool football jersey danced knock-kneed and carefree in front of his stall of mobile phone chargers. 

Instead of balloons and streamers for decorations, the place was festooned with bundles of dangling onions, red, brown and white. There were heaps of crisp green vegetables lined up on concrete benches and a boy walked along the row with a bucket of water, dipping his hand in and flicking water over the vegetables as though it was confetti at a wedding. The water dripped onto the concrete floor below. I walked past piles upon piles of tomatoes, firm and juicy, then baskets full of potatoes. Over there, the fish, I could tell by the smell. On a wooden bench sat the tiny dried fish, scooped into piles for ten kwacha, twenty kwacha, fifty kwacha. On the next bench, the fresh chambo, with scales wet and slippery. 

Up above, from the branches of a tree, hung second hand trousers. In the next tree, perched like migratory birds, were discarded first world t-shirts of all the colours. A lime green Bob’s Plumbing, Ottowa, flapped next to a navy blue I love Adelaide, their slogans marks of their distant homelands. They ruffled their feathers in the breeze.

Up the back, in brick rooms the size of broom cupboards, sat the tailors with pins in mouth, hunched over their sewing machines, busily constructing the flamboyant coloured dresses seen all over town. Next door was the electrical repairman, buried to his neck in the skeletons of old televisions and video players, as though he was slowly turning into one of these mechanical devices. The clanging of metal led me past the pots, watering cans and hoes. Alongside these, within a cloud of flies, was where the meat was cut up and sold. Carcasses hung by a hook, limbs and organs scattered around, and live chickens clucked with rightful concern from inside tiny cages.

My first trip to the market was like arriving at a party where I knew nobody, and I was for some reason wearing only my underpants. People stared. Their eyes fixed on me as soon as I entered their vision, and they followed my path, not looking away until I was gone. Others responded with exuberant amazement, as though they had been waiting all day just to see me, and now finally I had arrived. “Aah, mzungu!” they called, waving me over, “Buy tomatoes? Nice price! Special-special!” Young men crouched in groups talking conspiratorially, old women sat on benchtops, their legs stretched elegantly before them, as they shelled peas and laughed with their neighbours.  It was noisy, but not the way traffic or machinery is noisy. Warm, happy noise.

The market's jumble of wooden stalls was surrounded by a two metre high metal fence, but during the day vendors spilled outside this barrier and filled the surrounding streets. This creature would not be contained. The streets became part of the market itself; like tentacles extending from the main body, they entangled passers by, dragging them against their will into the hungry mouth of the marketplace. 

With practice I learned that this is no 'quick duck out to the shops' shopping experience, but a social occasion requiring handshakes, laughter, banter, bargaining and promises of future visits. Compliments were exchanged, and customer/vendor loyalty was built. 

But what was it they were celebrating? Maybe it was the raw vitality of life itself; the colour and smell, the very feel of this moment in time. In a life stripped back to the basics, where there is no need to rush from here to there (for what is more important than being here, now?), a trip to the market was a fine way to spend some time.  


2004

I don't have many photos from the market because I found that by taking out my camera I immediately felt like an observer rather than a participant in the moment. 

The smaller Mpondabwino market nearby.