The African Sky

Just sitting watching the African sky - splashed with orange and strawberry, as the encroaching night drinks up the last of its light.

Things hidden before, add their voices in praise to the dark, while others lament at the slow dying sunlight - crawling away to their underground holes to escape the icy cold fingers of night.

A peace settles down over the land. It is the sort of peace that calms your inner being, relaxes the mind and you find yourself, just wanting to sit in this bundu setting and commune with your maker - who ever you perceive Him to be.

The night brings his own contribution to your life and thoughts. He hides the busyness of life, the colour, the things that distract - leaving you to contemplate what was, what is and what could be. Visions and plans run races around you, and dreams and fantasy slowly make their way over to sit down with you on the fast cooling veranda, as the sun with its last breath - gives up the fight with the dark, and puts to bed its light.

I love times like this, the Piet-my-vrou, shouting out to whoever will listen. The cricket protected by the blanket of night - braving the predators to add its music to the orchestra of the night - just warming up, ready for the concert of a lifetime.

It's a time when I can evaluate what went wrong and what went right, to plan for a better tomorrow.
It's a time when I can just give way to dreams - allowing my mind just to wonder and have its way, and create for myself a world where we all are heroes, where all dreams are reality and where I can live to my full potential.

Then all of a sudden another unwelcomed visitor settles onto my skin, his icy, clammy fingers peeling the heat off my body. It's the chill of the African night, that penetrates right to my bones and introduces himself to me, assuring me he will not leave no matter what I try to do. He clings on with relentless determination and starts to find loopholes in my warm clothing and wormholes into my open mind - devouring my dreams as he does.

Time for bed, to dream other dreams over which I have no control, to plan other plans with forces that determine my fate, like it or not - and to wait for the resurrection of a new day and the new sun with its own challenges to be met, face to face - as the forces of light and dark gamble over who will win.

So I stand up - leaving the night to those who have come out of hiding to thrive in its welcoming blanket of darkness and cold - to do what has been planned for them to do, since the birth of time.