Guest Blogger= Karen Laurence-Rowe, Wildlife Artist

“Harmattan King”  …. against the wind – like so much of our wildlife!

With the steady destruction of the worlds wildlife species I think the depiction of these wonderful beasts has almost become a personal obligation!   How tragic is it going to be, when one day, one of my grandchildren looks at a painting I have done of an elephant or an African lion and says to me “Granny – whats that?”    With the danger of this being so very real,  I now no longer sit in my studio daubing with complacency… I complete every painting almost as a matter of urgency!

I need to record it – before it is lost to this world forever!

- See more at: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/guest-blogger-karen-laurence-rowe-wildlife-artist/#sthash.IaHzisyD.dpuf

In the Souk-Morocco

This amazing old crone (there is no other way to say it) had a stall at the edge of the souk, opposite where we sat down for a coffee.  It was impossible to judge how old she was, quite possibly not very old at all, for these people often live very tough lives and age quickly.  We had been over to her stall to look at her wares, which appeared to be bits of dead I-dread-to-think.  Certainly the smell drove us away promptly.  The woman herself was extremely loud, despite the pensive look in this quick sketch.  Yes, her hands were big like that – huge hands that had done a great deal of hard work.  They were more like a man’s hands and, indeed, her general features were, and for a mad moment I wondered if it really was a man … and perhaps it was.  She did a great deal of shouting, angry shouting, at an older man nearby.  He in turn just went back and forth, back and forth, between an old timber cart drawn by a moped and the back of a small shoe repair shop.  He ignored her completely.

We watched for a while, drank our coffee (though I think mine was mint tea) and then set off around the souk, avoiding the old crone, and mesmerized by the brilliance of the colours, the cacaphony of sound and the exotic mixture of scents and smells.  All around Arab boys gathered, all trying to persuade us that we needed them as a guide.  We had taken one of these boys on, years earlier, in Tangiers.  His name, he told us, was Mustafa Coca-cola.  I sometimes remember him and wonder where he is now – no doubt running around with tourists in a souk just like this one.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are on Amazon and Kindle, or can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries.  Catherine Broughton has travelled widely and her book “Travels with a Biro” is due out soon.  More about Catherine Broughton on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

Our guest blogger today is Charles Thuo from Kenya.

A FAIR LOOK AT  KENYA – an article contributed by Charles Thuo of Kenya.

Kenya is indeed a beautiful country in the heart of Africa. It is a country rich in wildlife as well as diverse culture and heritage. Apart from Kenya being known for its amazing sceneries & tourist attractions, it is also reckoned by most countries for its prowess in sports .In athletics for example, the world is held breathless at the amazing talent and flair demonstrated by Kenyan athletes. The Kenya rugby sevens team receives an international standing ovation as they use their muscle strength, swiftness and skill to silence their contenders.

For this blog in full and more please see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/our-guest-blogger-today-is-charles-thuo-from-kenya/

Frangi-Pangi

I have fond memories of playing, with my little sister, in a frangi-pangi tree in Nigeria when I was a little girl.  The tree was in the middle of the front lawn of our house in Ibadan, and my sister and I played – incredibly – “house” in the tree.

I suppose the tree must have been a good size, for we were aged something around 7 and 8, and we found areas of the tree that were the bedroom, or the kitchen and so on.  We wore just knickers – my mother had made them, blue and white stiped knickers with little roses in the stripes.  They had a wide frill of the same fabric around the edge of the leg. There were several pairs of them.  Looking back on it, I suppose my mother made them as something easy to replace, easy to wash and, although they weren’t shorts, they were not quite knickers either.  We were always barefoot.  We used to arrange the frangi-pangi in our hair and around the waist-band of our knickers.

We went to school, of course, driven there in a Landrover by a Nigerian called “driver”.  We thought that was his name.  I don’t remember anything about him except that he took us to school, along with my big brother, and then fetched us again when, as soon as we were home, we stripped off our school clothes and climbed in to the frangi-pangi tree.

The house was big with a wide shadey terrace running all around it.  We had a houseboy called Difon and a cook and a “gardener” – I use inverted commas because the garden was really just a dust bowl with a frangi-pangi tree.  The cook’s children often used to play with us.  We also had an English nanny called Valerie, who we all loved very much, even though we got spanked for using her make up.

At some stage another little sister appeared.  It seemed she was bright red.   She was seven years younger, and quite an oddity, bundled in a huge white nappy, and lying either in my mother’s arms or in a cot that seemed much too big for her.

One day there was a snake weaving its way through the upright slats of the cot.  The baby lay silently.  My mother read.  My brother, sister and I watched the snake for a while and then one of us felt it a good idea to mention it to our mother.

“Mummy, there is a snake in the cot…”

My poor mother!  It was only many years later she mentioned to me how she hated Nigeria, and that after the snake incident she begged my father (who was a doctor of tropical disease) to return to South Africa.  Four years in Nigeria is enough for any white woman even in those days when it was “British”.

From there we went to Switzerland for a few years, and then to the South Pacific – that was wonderful, and forms the happiest part of my childhood memories.  Along with the frangi-pangi tree.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist. Her books are available on Amazon and Kindle or can be ordered from major book stores and libraries.  Catherine Broughton is also an artist and a poet. More about her, to include her entertaining blogs and short stories from around the world, on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk