Living for Disco

A tar road stretches through the windscreen as far as the eye can see.  It winds through vast golden savannah that turns from burnt orange to canary yellow with the breeze.  In the very distant distance, hazy mountains of dusky pink and royal purple provide a backdrop that defies belief – it is as if it has been painted on canvas, through which the car could burst at any moment, scattering theatrical props and mowing down screaming stage hands.  It is jaw-droppingly beautiful, and we sit in the car, drinking it in.  As we pass by, thousands of small birds fling themselves from the roadside grass in alarm.

THUNK

As a tiny bird bounces off the windscreen at startling speed, all three women in the car cry out involuntarily in horror and disgust.  Something unpleasantly yellow has smeared the windscreen.  A small tuft of baby feathers flitters softly on the windscreen wiper.  Marie switches on the wiper and the feathers are gone.

A few more birds hurl themselves joyfully beneath the wheels of the car, and we endure grimly, and in hungover silence.

THUNK

Another corpse flies off the windscreen, three voices go “eeurgh”, three women wince.  You can’t avoid the stupid little bastards, and you can’t slow down, – there are too many, and they seem to be getting their kicks from playing a statistically uncompromising game of chicken.

THUNK-THUNK

Three voices go “Oh, jesus.”  There appears now to be a wing stuck in the wiper, without much else attached; it waves at us cheerily.  Something red and fleshy quivers on the windscreen.

“I don’t even want to know what that is”, says Marie.

We decide that we cannot go on with the remains of a dead sparrow wedged in the driver’s line of sight, and so we pull over.  As I lift the wing off the windscreen, it feels as if I am lifting air.

We continue to mow down sparrows on the long drive to Luderitz.  I hope the diamonds are worth the trail of carnage.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 7:38 am and is filed under Under African Skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.