Inward Renewal

I got this picture off the internet but it’s the closest looking to the lizards that reside under our rocks and in our flower beds.  They enjoy climbing up our screen door and catching flies or mosquitos.  When we first moved into our house it was infested with lizards.  It wasn’t uncommon to sit in on one of our love seats and soon find a lizard peering over your shoulder.  My response was to scream, Tim’s was to kill the things.  He’s broken two of my brooms killing lizards in our house.  Well, we’ve finally gotten a handle on the lizards because Tim “lizard-proofed” our front door.

Last week I was out on our front patio (can’t remember what I was doing) but when I came back in, a lizard followed me.  When I saw it, I screamed – it’s just automatic.  The lizard was having difficulty with our newly polished stone floor.  It slipped and slid down the hallway, then back toward me.  My house helper, Grace, thought something terrible was happening and when she saw it was only a lizard she giggled a bit.  Then she and Tim escorted the lizard outside.

When all was well with the world again: the lizards were outside and I was safely inside. Grace told me that it is a Bemba belief that if a lizard follows you, you are pregnant.  Well, I am indeed pregnant, so perhaps there is some validity to this myth.

The seasonal rains bring an influx of snails into our back yard.  Big and small, they move in packs.  They squeegie themselves up and over everything and dependably leave green poop trails wherever they go.  We don’t really like them that much because we like to walk in our back yard barefoot.  Ian and Ireen are out there all the time barefoot.

If we’re not careful, they get crushed easily under our feet.  We’re not sure what they’re made of, because they can cause a tingling sensation if their slime isn’t washed off.  So, I make my rounds to pick them up, chucking them as far as I can out of our yard.  But it’s inevitable that next downpour will bring yet another slug fest.  Our family calls them slugs, but actually they’re mollusks because of the hard shell that protects their body.

We didn’t know very much about these unusual creatures until we tried to find out more info.  What we found was that most people confuse slugs and snails – but that they aren’t in the same category because of their shell.  Andrea and I were washing off the patio after they had come and gone because of the slimy residue they left.  While we’re not amused by their slime-off, it actually serves an important purpose for them.  Slime allows the snail to move across any type of terrain without injuring its body.  They’re very touchy feely creatures too – sliming everything they get close to.  That’s because they aren’t able to see or hear.  They rely on their sense of touch to interact with each other and their sense of smell to find food.

Did you know that they come rank number two, behind insects, in terms of their sheer quantities on earth?  We discovered a little insight as to why they are present in such large quantities.  Get ready cause this is kind of sick and cool at the same time…. they’re hermaphrodites.  This means that they are neither male nor female.  They do mate, but they have the ability to produce both sperm and eggs.  When two snails are mating they will BOTH conceive and lay eggs. No wonder they are numerous!

We had the privilege of seeing something that many people don’t get to view up close – elephants bathing, swimming, playing and mating in the water.  The Singletons, Hiltys and Armes decided to go in together to rent a boat and hire a river guide to take us out on the Zambezi River to see animals from the water.  It really was a spectacular experience.  We saw crock, monitor lizards, hippos and elephants.  And we were very close.  The elephants at first seemed skiddish that we were inching closer – but soon relaxed.  Our boat was so excited to view the entire event (lasting more than 30 minutes).  Here are a few pics:

On a recent family outing, we went to a town called Chirundu which borders Zimbabwe.  Tim, being the safari man he is, scouted out all the possible sites to see while we were there.  A few kilometers before the town, we stopped at the Chirundu Forest Reserve.  Tim and Michelle (along with us for the weekend) got out and started scouting out the place.  It didn’t look all that interesting to me at first so I hung back getting the children ready.  I took Ian and Ireen – we walked around the path and I was, for the most part, unimpressed.  Tim, on the other hand, was thrilled with what he saw.  Perhaps the discrepancy exists because I was looking up at trees and Tim was looking down at stumps.  This was a petrified forest.  No, it wasn’t scared of wild animals…the tree stumps were wood turned into rock.  They maintained the appearance of wood but all organic material had been replaced by minerals in a process called petrification.  Really, quite cool. Ian might gain more of an appreciation in years to come.

If you read our last post on the plant propagation efforts we’ve made for Ciyanjano,  you may be wondering where we got 1,800 new sisal (agave sisalana) starts.  Well, actually these starts were vegetatively propagated.

The sisal plant has a unique design for its survival. After about 5 years a mature sisal plant will send up a pole (shoot) which flowers. The pole grows extremely fast (10-12 cm per day) and very tall (5-6 meters).  As this pole reaches its maximum height is sends out branches that flower.  Eventually on this one plant, as many as 2,000 bulbils can grow on these flowering stems.  Bulbils are small baby plantlets that are miniature versions of its parent. It’s astonishing how the plant “mothers” thousands of its own new plants at the same time.  When the formation of the bulbils are complete, they have reached a point of maturity where they fall the full 5-6 meter distance down to the ground.  The mother plant then dies.

By sending a pole up so high, the sisal plant has a better chance of the small plantlets falling further away from the base of the plant. For me, the sisal plant illustrates how imaginative and creative God is and how blind I am to the wonders of His creation. Unless I make it a point to observe and investigate, I’ll never “see”. I never would have paid any interest in the life cycle of the plant if I wasn’t interested in propagating the plant myself.

Although sisal originally came from Mexico, the sisal plant is now grown commercially all over the world to make twine.  In 1893 sisal bulbils were imported and introduced to British East Africa, where countries like Tanzania and Kenya produced it in large quantities. Since then, sisal has been propagated all over sub-Saharan Africa.  Brazil, China and Tanzania are now the world’s biggest producers.

I try to spend as much time in my backyard as possible.  I absolutely love listening to the birds, smelling the fresh air and dreaming up new landscape designs.  It’s really a haven of rest for our whole family, not to mention a healthy outlet for me to get mind off of mission things once in a while.  A few weeks ago, I decided to try my hand at propagating trees and shrubs.  I decided to first concentrate on sisal, bougainvillea, mulberry and an ornamental tree common to these parts.  My end goal is to propagate these in mass quantities and then transplant them at our retreat center/ campground called Ciyanjano.  I’ve been pricing bougainvillea plants at the local greenhouses, and they’re costing approx $7.50 per plant.  Instead of the mission buying plants like these for shrubbery I figure I’ll propagate them myself and save.  Right now I have 1,800 sisal plants growing in a long flower bed in the back yard.  The pictures I’ve taken are the result of 4 weeks of growth.  I’d really like to propagate fruit trees to later transplant at the campground.  My next door neighbor James knows how to graft and promises one day to show me the special techniques needed to make that successful.  I’ll probably start with a lemon tree since they have a reputation for establishing themselves quickly.  I can’t get enough of this… it’s so much fun!