I have many things to be grateful for. If I was to make a list, it would be pretty long.  Gratitude is like a gift to yourself – and others. For when you are aware of what is good in your life and grateful,  you are happier, more positive and perhaps healthier too.

I recently visited my family in Zimbabwe and that is high on my list. Travelling to Zimbabwe or Lusaka, or indeed going up to Chisamba to take my daughter out for a weekend from boarding school, can be challenging, for the roads in Zambia are now congested and difficult to drive. But, at each end of all these journeys are some of the people I care about the most. How lucky I am to be able to get into my car to go and see them.  

“Glad that I live am I, that the sky is blue. Glad for the country lanes, and the fall of dew.”

So goes the old hymn that we used to sing way back when I was in kindergarten. I have mentioned it before. It is a simple song, written by American poet Lizette Reese, and I for one would sing it with heartfelt, great gusto. I still sometimes do. You know, when I’m  home, alone. Which is actually not that often, for as a farmer’s wife, I have his company at breakfast and at lunch, and in the afternoon after work is done. This being of course, one of the things on that gratitude list of mine. Although, perhaps not always on his…Ahem. Moving along.

Living in the bush as we do, is of course very high on the list, for this is my happy place. I love to listen to the little squeaks of the Mauritian Tomb Bats who roost outside our window when they have babies, and the sweet familiar trill of the Fiery-Necked Night Jar. There is nothing quite like the silence of an African bushveld night, perhaps punctuated by insects, a bush baby or an owl;  other peoples’ barking dogs, in town, is something I never really get used to.

I find sometimes, there is too much noise in the outside world, for me, now.   I feel noise-assaulted in the shopping malls and in some shops themselves, where extremely loud music is the order of the day. It is impossible to find a quiet corner to have a phone conversation and my phone will often ring unattended because I simply have not heard it.  In one particular shop, the music is also accompanied by karaoke style singer with a cacophonous and tinny microphone, who loves not only to sing at the top of his voice but also to entreat customers in by repeatedly telling them the special low prices. When I come home again, I am so very grateful for the quiet which is broken only by cicadas. Or the hum of a kettle I’m boiling to make some tea.  

I feel blessed to be able to enjoy the birds going about their day-to-day business, and in my garden too, their lives continuing regardless of mine. The seasonal Masked Weavers have arrived and nest building is frantic and clamourous. But that’s a noise I can really live with. In the back garden a Paradise Flycatcher can be seen in and out of a large, leaf-laden Mnondo tree, as his perfect nest takes shape.  Meanwhile, my husband recently discovered a small nest in the open electrical box in the garage. The little bird, as yet unidentified, appears not to be bothered by the light that stays on in the night and now has a trio of speckled brown eggs.   (See the little slide show below.)

I feel blessed that Nature is all around me, that I am able to go into the veld, to breathe in the scent of the fragrant wild trees and to see warthog and zebra, on a Sunday walk in the game park behind our house. I am glad I can take respite from the fierce, summer sun, in pools of deep, green, leafy shade. In October, especially,  I am more than grateful for ice floating on the top of cold drinks and for cool early mornings, cold water showers after exercise and the quick refreshing plunge into our backyard pool.

For reading a good book on a rainy day, for friends and good food, for music and dancing because no-one is watching out here in the boonies…..there is a veritable crowd of things at the top of my grateful list; and the song of the Heuglin’s Robin (White Browed Robin Chat) to start, and end, my day, is right up there amongst them.

ABBA, the towering pop group from Sweden began their career in 1972. They went on to have 48 chart-topping hits until the group disbanded in 1982. This particular one “Thank you for the Music”, was released in 1977.

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