I started
this post 10 days ago and I am only now finding a few moments to get it posted.
This past
week has been a very emotional one. My dear mum fell on Sunday and broke her
arm. She is 90 years old and other complications have come up in the tests they
ran. She is unable to have the op she needs to correct her break as her heart
is not doing what it should, it is a 90 year old heart after all. So for a
while I will be a 24/7 caregiver as she is helpless without her right arm. Hospitals
aren’t what they used to be, and sadly the nursing care isn’t as compassionate
as it should be. In my comings and goings twice a day to the hospital, I have
experienced a sad, quirky and wonderful Durban
once more.
The
hospital is on the Berea,
high up on the hill. The view from the hospital is one of a sprawling Durban with all its
wonders and hidden treasures, as well as insidious grime and crime. Looking out
across this bland autumn skyline with its buildings tall and dim in the haze,
it is difficult to imagine a Durban
forested and with African Big Fivers roaming freely.
 | |||
| Still standing |
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| breaking pavements |
Driving through the
suburbs, some of the old Natal mahogany trees (Trichelia Dregeana) still stand, some fractured and
with missing limbs, and some dangerously hollow inside and liable to crash onto
a car in the next wind or heavy rain. These trees spring gnarled out of tarred
pavements, but they flower and seed themselves yearly and their dark foliage
still blackens parts of the Berea.
It is said that the first explorers were astounded at the blackness of the
hills as they looked out across the Berea
from the sea. They referred to these trees as “thunder trees”. These miraculous
seething Durban
coastal forests housed a wealth of wildlife, but now they have been razed, tarred
in, trafficked and peopled. It has taken less than 200 years to become
something outside of Nature’s intentions.
In 1839,
the Swedish naturalist Johan Warlberg (the Warlberg’s Eagle, is named after
him) got lost in the forest near Mitchell Park and had to fire shots in the air
to call for help. Elephants wandered down the Berea to the Umgeni river just 150 years ago
and, not that long ago (1884), the last recorded lion left its prints on the
earth near the Botanic Gardens.
Durban’s wealthiest built and lived in
their huge colonial mansions right up on this Berea Ridge. Some of these
beautiful Edwardian, Victorian and Art Deco mansions still stand, and some have
been pulled down to make way for modern homes, blocks of flats and
offices,and
the Berea has
become somewhat tired and far too busy.
I don’t
want to focus on the destruction of this beautiful forest, but rather on what
is still there, and a lovely early evening I spent there. After a hospital visit,
I left, to the sound of some disturbing screaming by an elderly woman who could
not be consoled and for whom my heart broke, leaving me helpless and aching. I
couldn’t face the thought of my dirty house and making something to eat, so my
daughter, Mandy, and I went for dinner at Nino’s on Problem Mkhize (yes, the
same street I wrote about in my “Problem” post).
Although
this is far from a scenic spot as it overlooks the street and parking lot, it
has a Trichelia growing right there
in the parking lot, and several others lining the balcony edge of the
restaurant.
 |
| A loud and trembling Trichelia |
These trees are the chosen roosts of the Indian Mynah birds. These
Indian or Asian Mynahs were introduced to Durban
around 1902 when captive birds were released. They are closely associated with
human activities, and, like humans, are opportunistic. They are loud, cocky and
always ready for a fight. Anyone who has been dive-bombed by a Mynah will know
exactly what I’m speaking about. They are one of the most successful bird
species in the world.
They are considered vermin here and thrive at the expense
of other bird species. So for the purpose of this post I am ignoring the very
real, complex and worrying fact that these birds pose a serious threat to bio-diversity
in Durban and
am focusing on their bold behaviour and how they have become part of our city
landscape. These birds have bred profusely in typical opportunistic style, and
have taken over the city (a bit like an Alfred Hitchcock movie). Their brazen
character has become very much part of the Durban buzz.
Not long
after we arrive at Nino’s the Mynahs begin their cacophony. Just after 5pm they
start descending on the trees to roost. Their own darkness cloaks them well and
they are barely visible, even when the trees shake with their flapping and
pecking and raucous shouting for a space to sleep. It is deafening, and any
Durbanite (wherever they are) will immediately recall this sound as I describe
it here.
They fly in, the white on their wings like flitting sparks in the
dimming light, and then they leave again to perch on the office block window
sills alongside, only to return in a huge flock back to the branches so it
seems like some isolated wind rustles and tugs at the dark old tree.
With the
dark Mynahs unseen within it, it is as though the tree itself shudders. We
can’t speak at our table, we can’t hear each other, so we watch and take some photos.
The light
slowly dims, and high white clouds slowly grow brighter and turn from blazing
gold to orange and then faintly pink, and the Mynahs seem to settle, still
calling and tugging at their roosting tree.We have an
odd but kind, chatty waiter, who informs us that the cooking staff has no idea
what a foccacio is, and somehow I don’t care the way I would normally care, but
I do point out it’s in the menu and this is an Italian franchised restaurant.
Instead of a rant I just smiled weakly and opted for garlic bread (to regret it
later). Mandy and I look sceptically at each other as the waiter waxes lyrical
about parrots that descend on the same Trichelia
housing the roosting Mynah birds. Green parrots, he says, and they stay on
the outside of the tree. “Oh, how wonderful,” I say, noticing the condescending
tone I take on. “That must be a sight” (too much talking
to old people in the hospital ward perhaps?). As our food arrives so do the
‘parrots’. If my thoughts about the waiter’s story of the parrots had been
words, I would have been eating them with my pasta. The sky is filled with a
flock of birds, fluorescent green and yellow. Their flight and landing is
positively parrot-like. They land, true to the waiter’s observations, on the
outside of the tree and begin that shuffling-sideways parrot-walk, along the
branches, holding onto leaves and twigs with their beaks as they scramble
along.
They too fly off and back, giving us a dazzling show of streaking greens
across the sky. They are Rosy Ringed Parakeets, and I’ve never seen them like
this. The lights in the car lot shine on the parakeets, and it seems as if they
glow from inside, like Christmas lights on the dark leafed branches. The Mynahs
still shriek together, a grand choir of failed singers, and if they are aware
of the parakeets on the outskirts they don’t seem to mind. It all seems strangely
dreamlike, and rather bizarre; thinking about my mum who has been part of Durban all of her life,
the birds, the odd waiter, all woven together at the heart by a flock of luminous
green parakeets.
I looked
out across the parking lot to the glaring Caltex sign on the other side. The unpredictability of life tugged at my thoughts, yet I felt a small smile
within. There was a spell in the air, a strange ending to a trying day.
This had been a moment, no earth shattering event, nothing that could change anything, yet I will remember that blink of an eye in the day with the Mynahs in the trembling limbs of the aging tree, and the bright green henchman, hanging on the outer twigs. Just another “Durban dazer,” when just about anything can happen… and does.
And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. ~William Shakespeare
p.s. the parakeets also come from India, escaped pets that have bred profusely all over the world including London. Perhaps this is why the Mynahs and Parakeets are such good bedfellows? Here's a link to them with a close up pic. http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/kwazulu-natal/getting-to-know-durban-s-little-guests-1.1214995?ot=inmsa.ArticlePrintPageLayout.ot
