Wednesday June 23rd

Day 65

This mulberry tree I’m sitting under - graceful drooping branches, single pinkish fruits, each one like a miniscule hard bottle brush - is nothing like the tree we had in our back garden in Lusaka. That was towering tall, and dripping with fat purple-black berries like long hairy raspberries. The ones from the very top branches fell in ripe splats on the ground, staining the soles of our bare feet while we pulled at the ones we could reach, stuffing them in our mouths.

Last night, in a small French village, we sat in pews in a high ceilinged church with peeling painted cream walls. Where the priest would have stood, in the oak panelled pulpit, several black flies swooped and darted. As if they were performing an intricate dance in the beam of sunlight streaming through the plain glass window above them.

I watched as the flies dived on members of the two choirs, arranged in an arc around the pulpit. They batted them away with their music sheets, and carried on singing, in smiling harmonies. They were like a row of swaying tulips, their shirts and tops, blouses and tunics all shades of red, fuschia pink, orange, acid yellow and white.

I remembered then, another choir - an African choir of men and women, all in long magenta robes, with round white collars. They ran, laughing, to greet us when we arrived in their village, five Europeans in a Landrover. One of us, my father, who they call Muluti, had been a long time away from them. They stood in a crowd around us, barefoot in the red dust and sang their lyrics of welcome. I didn’t understand their words - only the joy in them.