Surprised woman walking
I have a subscription to a magazine called Yes! In the last issue there was an article about the 10 things that science says will make you happy. Top of the list was “savor everyday moments” and I’ve been doing a lot of that recently.
Walking to work the other day I came across a little tortoise in my driveway. This was my second sighting so I decided to pick him up and put him even further back in the yard to try and make sure that he didn’t end up flattened on the road. But the next morning there he was, out and about again. So I made an emergency call to friends who I think of as tortoise experts. The tortoise changed hands and he’s been released in the bush.
I’ve started to see small groups of goats being moved from A to B in the eastern suburbs of Harare. Luckily I haven’t been running my dog on any of these occasions. He becomes uncontrollable at the sight of an egret, what then when he eyeballs some goats? Because he’s a bit of a handful, a friend brought me back a “no pull harness” from Washington DC. All well and good if your walking your poodle on Pennsylvania Avenue but not for the variety of encounters, goat and otherwise, that you might have on the streets of Harare.
In Highlands there’s this house built like a boat. At one point my walking companion suggested that it was a houseboat and would soon be towed off to Kariba. We realised this wasn’t the case when we saw a double lock up garage in its bow. Farai the Almighty is alive and well and living on Glenara Avenue.
One of my walking routes to work takes me along Princess Avenue and the other morning I saw the chef of China Town restaurant doing Tai Chi and very high knee kicks in his driveway.
And the other evening, on my way home, I saw Dr Paul going into the DVD store in Newlands Shopping Centre. I was taken aback in that childish way when we used to get excited when we saw one of our teachers having dinner out and thinking, Oh My God, Miss Williams actually eats, she’s normal! I found myself thinking the same about my dentist and wondering what movie he’d hire after a hard day’s drilling.