These are the days

Our days are filled with magic and the easiest way to behold this is through the eyes of our children.

I am constantly reminded of this as each day passes in our tree house, on a hill in Africa. Every day is an adventure that starts with just being here. There are days when we have expectations, plans, while on others we have none and suddenly we discover what we are doing today. Sometimes the plans turn out better than we dreamed and on other occasions there is disappointment. That is also something to be felt with passion and an open heart. It's all feeling and being and playing.

Games are what we do best. Competitive games, imaginary games, dressing up, chasing games, like hide and seek, open gates, you're it, stuck in the mud; where running on ever stronger legs is the joy. Or, just hanging out, in between games. Being in the space between then and now, talking about stuff.

Or thinking about stuff, or, just being ...stuff.

Monica is our dyeing expert, she and her assistants have dyed many thousands of metres of cotton for Zimbabalooba, over many years. She lives down at the bottom of the hill, with her family. Her husband Eddie had been one our printers, until some years ago, when he died, suddenly, from a heart attack. That is Eddie's son Mike with his bike.

Monica has rabbits, and chickens, but the fluffy, grey bunnies are what catch Mila and Ella's fancy. Fortunately, it doesn't come up in conversation, why Monica has bunnies. It's just assumed that she also likes cute little bunnies. Monica, naturally, agrees that the girls can have a bunny each. We borrow a cage and now we have bunnies. Once upon a time, we had rats, back in Cape Town. They were called Charlie and Delphine and they lived in our bathroom. They had a cage but it was decided that they could roam freely and on more than one occasion, while I was relieving myself in a dark bathroom, in the middle of the night, I had a rat run over my foot. Being half asleep when this happens is deeply disturbing, and brings one to full alert in seconds. Even on the second and third occasion it elevated me. So, finally, I insisted that Charlie and Delphine be locked up. They then shredded our bath towels that were hanging near their cage. Instead of Charlie and Delphine we now have Charles and Diana, as far as I am concerned, they are a great improvement.

There is only one small problem, called Oscar. He doesn't have a bunny but he wants one, either of the bunnies will do, he just wants to cuddle one and carry it around, of course, for the girls this is not an option.

Luckily, Monica also has guinea pigs, so off we go off to ask her if Oscar can have one. Oscar is delighted with his guinea pig but the guinea pig doesn't feel the same way about Oscar. The girls, of course, feel sorry for the guinea pig but at least their bunnies are no longer in danger, not from Oscar anyway.

On one of our days with a plan, we go for a swim at a neighbour's pool. Jules lives down the road and he has a swimming pool with a difference. It has a gum pole across it. We have never seen a pool with a pole.

We arrive home to a tragic sight - the lifeless, little bodies of the bunnies, and Oscar's guinea pig is nowhere to be seen. The dog from next door has struck, we suspect, the same dog that barked at Ella, the day before. That was down my Monica's house and, luckily, her big sister warned her not to run.

There is nothing that we can do for Charles and Diana. The little creatures that had been so loved were now empty, their bodies were there but they had gone. Their eyes told us that. Here was an important moment for us, death had happened. For the first time, these children have experienced death and accept it with sadness and loss and something more, that I can't put into words. It was they who say to me "Dad, we have to bury them". So we dig a grave and lay them in it and cover them over, with a little cairn of rocks and some wild grass on top of the grave. Then we say goodbye to Charles and Diana, she was going to have babies, but now they will never arrive. That is how it has come to be. Mila and Ella know it and, as with everything else, they move on. What Oscar thinks, no one really knows.

In the evenings, there is no electricity, unless we crank up the old generator, literally. The last ritual before sleep, is stories but before we get to them, there is still energy to burn, not necessarily with the generator. Here is an example of a spontaneous game, out of nowhere, with what would seem to be nothing. The inside of our house is a work in progress and the plumbing for the bathroom is part of that, thus there are lengths of plastic pipe lying around. These pipes, it turns out, make a great skipping "rope", being rigid, the pipe keeps its arched position and all you have to do is rotate it while the skipper skips.

When it comes to story time everyone is a volunteer. The pleasure of snuggling down with a book with all the best people around, the honour of being the reader, the one who tells the tale that someone else has created, to my beloved. Life doesn't get more beautiful than that. And it goes on every night, picking up where we were loath to stop, the night before; when we were just too tired to carry on. The characters, good and bad, the places far away, the magic of storytelling - a ritual that we have shared, since the beginning.