With this winter that will not end, my thoughts are turning to our Africa days with a longing for some tropical warmth.
After one fine day yesterday (wherein I managed to plant out some onion sets and broad bean plants) the rain returned in the night. And today it has rained and rained and rained. There was also fog over the fields for most of the day. Only as I write this at 7pm (and I’m wondering if looking at this Zanzibari scene hasn’t worked some magic) is there a hint of watery sunlight over Wenlock Edge. But there is more rain forecast for the rest of the week. If it keeps up like this Shropshire will float away back to where it began 400 million years ago, and pretty much in the location of this photograph – off East Africa in the Silurian Sea.
It’s an amusing thought, floating back to Africa. I can already smell the jasmine and the sea-salted frangipani. And the soft lap of waves. And watching the sun go down over mainland Tanzania.
Tish Farrell 
Let me float with you! 🙂 🙂 I’ll paddle if I must. Idyllic shot, Tish.
You are a brick, Jo, volunteering for paddling duty. Let’s go!
🙂 🙂
Oh, you do have some thoughts, Tish!
🙂
Your musing about the cold and rainy weather is echoed back from BC. Thanks for sharing your wonderful sunset, Tish!
You are most welcome. Glad if it brightened your dreary weather too 🙂
Oh. You brought back the memories, Tish. I am thinking about sunset in Stone Town and enjoying the food in Forodhani Bazar while watching the sun went down. The breeze, the smell of the sea, the boat and many more. I wish I could come back.
Ah, Nurul. You and me both 🙂
Now that would be a trip. To float back to where it all began before the world wide flood.
Golden oldie! Poetry in the name but you bowled me over with the sea-salted frangipani – I smell rain here again
Hello Laura. Glad you liked my frangipani. And yes dankness is present here, if not the rain. I believe we’re promised a precipitation break today…
Maybe or will we get “some spits and spots” – to use current meteorological terms!
A nice whimsy, to be swept away by rains to an ancient primordial location. In Michigan, however, it would only mean being drowned by floodwaters as the inland sea resurfaced to claim its former home. Alas.
I like your take on my whimsy, Kirizar. Sad, though 😦
You remember this place with such fondness that surprises me, a native.
Well Peter that’s probably because our time in East Africa was very privileged in all sorts of ways. I know we had ‘gilded’ years there, and that life for far too many Kenyans can be desperate and brief, and that does make me very angry; particularly when Western vested interest is complicit in the system and has remained so, in various guises, since 1895. Actually you could well argue that the presence of the likes of us on British aid programmes and their ilk was/is part of the problem. That point of view was put to us by a Kenyan lawyer friend. As a writer, I’m also well aware that one might be accused of ‘out of Africa’ syndrome 🙂
You are very right, Tish. African governments such as that of Uhuru Kenyatta’s might as well sell their campaign pledges as “To Her Majesty’s Service” and “America first”. They are still pretty much controlled by Western governments. They figured out that if you stand for Western interests, then you can get away with anything, because the West, which has always sold itself as the guardian of democracy and human rights–if you cater for its interest and economic policies, if you bow for it, then you can get away with trashing democracy and crapping on human rights. It will look the other way. Especially when the competition is China which doesn’t care a whit about human rights or democracy. Jubilee Party is hurting us, but Bob Godec and Nic Hailey defend it as one of their own.
The capitalist hegemony is running amok in the Western World too. All seems to be dominated by geopolitics and propaganda. And greed of course.
We could fill a boat with blogging friends and sail gently south!
Oh now that sounds a brilliant idea, Gilly. A big owl and the pussycat sort of sailing party. What fun! I’ll bring the honey 🙂
This is so lovely and perfect timing as I like you am yearning for some warm sunshine on my skin. Hopefully in Portugal this month – we shall see. It has to stop at some point 🙂
That’s it exactly, Janet. One’s skin is feeling deprived. A trip to Portugal sounds ideal.
Sailing into the sunset and dreaming of times gone by. What better way to spend a cold wet day
Good to dream 🙂
Good to dream and the slogan for our Com Games is “share the dream”
I wouldn’t mind our little island floating somewhere off the Mediterranean!!
That would be good too. Bay of Messinia for me.
Beautiful capture! This is one of the reasons I love photographs – their ability to transport us to a different world, to trigger memories which are so precious!
Many thanks, Ju-Lyn. I like your perspective on photos.
I find as a student of photography, I learn a great deal by looking at beautiful photos like yours … so thank you for contributing to me education!
That is a very nice thing to say 🙂
Beautiful! We have our moments of longing, don’t we. I am silently looking into a trip back to Africa at some point…keeps me dreaming of these sunsets.
A trip back – that will be a big thing for you, but perhaps necessary.
Floating back to Africa… 🙂
What a lovely thought.
I think I have already commented that wazungu never really get over Africa, do we?
🙂
Nope. It sneaks into all our cells 🙂
Some call it “Le mal d’Afrique”. 🙂
Have a lovely week-end Tish.