These stories require you, the reader, to use your imagination......
Travelling to Ankoba for lunch on Friday afternoon, Hilton & I discovered we had a travelling companion. The smallest, opaque looking frog clinging for all its worth to Hilton's hairy calf! He looked like a "jelly baby" froggie or one of those rubbery suction toys that cling to the side of the bath for babies and little children to either play with or to scream like blazes when its brought near to them! He was very cold as I found out when he jumped from the hairy calf to my pretty foot and I nearly fell off the quad I got such a fright.......yes I know. A very small helpless frog made me jump! He seemed to feel safe on the hairy calf ......but I guess his sense of adventure won over safety and he disappeared into where we don't know. I hope he didn't have a wild imagination by wondering into the engine area and ending up a roasted little frog imagining he was this luscious specimen destined to sacrifice his juicy thighs for a gourmet French dish! One thing I do know. Should these little frogs ever decide to enter the Olympic games they would out jump any long jump Olympian "wanna" be!
The giggle moment of our lunch: Because a decent cup of tea is hard to come by on this Mad Magical Island, I carry my own Five Roses African Select Blend with me.....nothing like a good cuppa after a meal and dessert. Well for me anyway. Upon asking for a tea pot of hot water (mafana be) in Malagasy, and then "lost in translation" till I remembered the French for milk "au lait," I was offered a glass of white frozen yoghurt to enjoy with my boiling water and tea cup!! In due course the milk arrived in a little square sauce dish with handles and a spoon!!!!! Needless to say nothing is ever straight forward here - not even a cup of tea.
Saturday morning saw me showered and clad in my floral long pants and bright coral coloured blouse, wearing my "sparkly diamante" fancy sandals hopping on board the quad and donning my "Star Wars" silvery helmet! We were off to a farewell brunch in honour of QMM's GM whose contract has sadly come to an end. One thing you must understand.....there is plenty of colour on this island. The distracting feature of this colour is it is all tinged with a muddy grey. Thus, as we went whizzing by I was acutely aware of the fact that today I was not blending with my environment!
Thank goodness for the pretty bright blue table linen and window dressing at the brunch venue! In my imagination, I was perceived as this pretty, bright butterfly hovering amidst friends spreading colourful cheer and reminding everyone there's more to life than neutral shades of "blending in" colour. Then it happened, I was responsible for the "ice-breaker" even though nobody had particularly assigned this task to me. The GM's little daughter was playing a game of her own imagination by placing small red and yellow plastic chips in any adult hand that was willing to play along. After being the lucky recipient of all the chips an uncontrollable urge came over me and I tossed them all into the air and they fell and rolled quite gloriously all over the floor! Could it have been the coral nail varnish that caused this oh so lovely ice-breaker! It was a sight to behold! All of a sudden adult males and females were scrabbling about on the floor, including the GM himself and his wife! All trying hastily to gather the chips. I want so desperately to tell you I rose ever so nonchalantly from helping to retrieve the chips and continued with my conversation. But alas! it wasn't in my heart for the little girl to get into trouble. So I confessed.
A brief moment -
non-conformist
child-like
splendidly satisfying
and colourful!
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