Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Stripes and Spots

I really need to start taking a camera with me when I go out of the apartment so that I can capture those wonderfully unusual moments that only happen when you least expect them. Earlier today I went on a field trip with the local Association to the Naivasha area to visit an artist’s studio. The artist’s work was quite impressive and I may or may not have purchased a lovely metal sculpture of a Masai warrior for the guest room. We spent a pleasant day at the farm/gallery and ate a very tasty lunch of salad and vegetarian lasagna before we hit the road for our return trip back to Nairobi.

During the hour and a half drive back into town we passed the Escarpment, lots of farms, and beautiful scenery. We saw lots of surprisingly cute donkeys and then I saw the most curious thing.

We drove past a small herd of black and white spotted cows grazing in the field next to the road. Not an unusual sight, I’ll grant you, but intermixed with these bovines was a herd of black and white striped zebras – also grazing. The ladies in the car with me (most of whom were long-timers here in Nairobi) were equally astonished at the unusual sight.

We joked that they couldn’t tell the difference between their spots and stripes and simply saw that they looked more or less the same. The small differences didn’t matter to them: they just wanted to be friends and share a patch of grass.

It’s amazing what we can learn from nature.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Glad to know you were out and about..how is tir-na-log? Would "it" like the Masai warrior?
merthyrmum