It was the flash of yellow wings which slapped my attention as I steeped
from the air-conditioned jeep and out into the furnace of the African day.
Above me, in the single shade tree by the crossroads, the weaver bird’s
nests hung like straw baubles from its bare branches. The owners squabbled
fiercely as they clamoured from branch to branch, occasionally darting from
cover to paint the sky’s blueness with a streak of golden light.
On the journey which had taken me far into the bush, the brownness of the
countryside had parched my sight, leaving it thirsty for colour. Hills
stooped in conical mounds, their far off silhouettes hugged the landscape
in a progression of dried out ochres. The ground itself was a single
coloured  pallete of red earth as far as the eye could see, dotted with
stunted brushwood and vicious thorns that waited to snag and tear at any
unprotected flesh. But here in the tiny settlement of Kavuti – a sparse
gathering of bedraggled mud and thatch huts – the flamboyantly colourful
richness of the weaver bird’s plumage brought a timely and welcome visual
respite.

As I watched the weaver birds, I was vaguely aware of people craning from
makeshift doorways to see the ‘Mzungu’; the whiteman who had come into
their midst. But one pair of eyes above all others dragged my attention
earthwards. There, a  young boy of maybe six or seven, leaned on the angle
of a broken and long dead tree, his bare-boned dog at his side, posing for
a photograph that waited to be captured. I waved, but there was no
response. I could only imagine what he made of this whiter than white man
who had added a new colour to his familiar world.

‘Jina lako nani?’ I asked in basic swahili. What’s your name? But his face
remained blank. He looked towards the dog that lay panting in a single
stripe of shade, as if the animal could provide some answer to his
questions. I held my camera up and  made the universal sign for taking a
picture, but still the canvas of his face came back empty. Stealing
photographs of people without permission can be invasive and even rude, so
I photographed the dog instead, who graciously turned my way as if nodding
his permission.

On the digital display of my camera back, I held the image of the tawny
coloured dog outstretched for his inspection. He stepped, suspiciously as
first from behind the sanctuary of his tree, leaning forward, inch by inch
to view the image I held in my white hands. At first he wasn’t sure. He
moved closer. But with his slow realisation of the magic I had just
performed, there came a smile that was brighter than the equatorial sun.
Again he moved closer. His eyes danced quickly from the small image to the
dozing animal, and back again to the image, before his wide lips parted and
a shout of laughter came from deep within. Quickly, he covered his mouth
with dusty hands, attempting to stifle his joy. His dark smiling eyes drank
in the picture. He pointed to the dog and then to the camera; look, he
seemed to say, there you are, sleeping in the box. His face formed a
question mark that screamed, HOW?

Then he looked around him, and searched for someone to share his special
moment, but there were none. Who would believe him? And so, with a shrug of
resignation, he slapped his hands together and another great burst of
laughter exploded from his small frame, launching the weaver birds in a
screaming, whirling splash of yellow from their nests, high in the tree
above the crossroads at Kavuti.