A Cornishman in Africa: Starlight Barking

Now in October out here things are pretty warm and when your house has a single layer asbestos roof it is no longer a house it’s an oven. Your house heats up throughout the day as the roof acts like a grill gently cooking everything in your home so when you get back after a hard days work it resembles a blast furnace, so the first thing you do is to open all the windows to get a nice through draft, but unfortunately its now 18.30 and the breeze cuts off like a guillotine, but you leave them open anyway, in the vain hope that at least some of the heat will vacate the premises. This in theory is a good idea but in practice just sends a great big invitation to all the bugs and especially mosquitoes to come on in and join the party. So by the time you go to bed you have a room full of bugs and a room temp of still 45 deg C.
So you are now lying slap bang in the middle of your bed, semi naked. I say in the middle of your bed because you are petrified of rolling over in the night and the cheek of one buttock touches the Mozi net because that sets off claxons and flashing lights all round Moquitodom and they all come down for the feast at Mr Sweaty’s bottom bar. Sorry I am wandering a little from the point.
The nights are usually very still and sound carries across the bush veldt for miles.
My neighbour Rolf has two Jack Russells (with inordinately long legs for some strange reason, maybe it’s the long sharp grass and Darwin’s theory)

Well Rolf's dogs decided to go for it last night, barking like beasts possessed, at a bushbaby. The time was somewhere around midnight, now this bushbaby is smart and he was obviously leading them a merry dance, jumping from tree to tree then sitting for a while in the tree laughing at them. The dogs were going berserk.

When it comes to annoying animals the place where I live abounds with them. These bushbabies, as well as winding up dogs have another interesting habit. Break dancing, yep that’s right, Break dancing. Now you may think that I am joking but I can assure you that most nights there is the Ngwewere bushbaby break dancing competition going on, on my very thin asbestos roof. The noise is astounding, it must be even better to watch, one day I am going to video it.
The next most annoying creature is a bird who bursts into song as the first hints of daylight begin to grace the sky with their presence.

Unfortunately this particular bird was not given the gift of song, it instead repeats the same monotonous note in one second spurts every second for hours, very loudly right outside my window.
This bird was given one gift however. It is totally invisible. And that is why it is still alive.
Anyway, these dogs keeping me awake. I waited for about 30 minutes hoping that someone else to shout at them, knowing full well that if I got up and did it a. I would be on the lunch menu again for all the bugs in the room and b. I would never get back to sleep again. but in the end no one else did so I decided to do it myself. I got up wandered to the door and they stopped. I waited, silence, I waited some more, nothing so I headed back to my bed and the little buggers starting again, I flew back to the door grabbing at the fruit bowl on the way passed and stormed through the door in my underpants (and you don’t want to know how attractive that is) I hurled a couple of apples as hard as I could out into the darkness, there was a slight yelp and two white shadows (?) darted away into the yonder. (Apples were the only thing that came readily to hand that I thought would stop them but probably not kill them) Once again silence abounded, apart from what I am sure was a slight sniggering from the trees above me. Anyway the dogs did not come back for the rest of the night and they took a wide berth around me the next morning.
Suffice to say I did not get back to sleep, but was ready and waiting to try and find that bloody invisible bird.



Denzil Bark.