Some days are diamonds, some days are hot black stones

It is cold and wet here in New Zealand and I am craving a warm swim in a temperate pool, or even a bubbing hot pool would be good. (Bionic Reading like this first sentence is apparently good for those who struggle with understanding and comprehension) I thought it would be interesting to try it out, but changing from bold to basic is a pain in the fingertips.

Anyhow, once upon a time, many miles away, the only way to safely attend the beaches of Zululand was armed with two towels. Yes, two. The sand is so hot that sandals are no match for the bone frying heat. The trick is to throw a towel in front of you and jump from where you are standing and onto the new towel. Turn and snag the other towel and continue throwing and jumping, until you reach the cooler wet sand near the water's edge. Then throw the towels just out of reach of the wetness and strip off your clothes and throw them onto said towels. Followed by a dash into the waves, swim past the breakers and float. Up and down where the bottom is out of reach and small movements of your hands and feet keep you on the surface for hours at a time. Only swimming to shore for a quick bite to eat or when you see a friend. By the end of the day, you feel wonderful and that night in bed your brain plays tricks on you and your cells vibrate like you are still in tune with the tidal pull of the sea. The next morning is when you pay the cost of your enjoyment. The sunburnt portions of your head are so red and sore that even walking outside in the shade sends stabbing pains through your brain. For the next few days the burn turns into an itchy, peeling, irritating challenge and you swear you will slather your head with sunscreen or wear a hat the very next time you repeat the trip to the beach. But, you don't. Hats fly away in the ocean breeze and there is always that spot you miss when you administer the sun screen. Although, to be truthful, sunscreen did not feature on the shopping lists of my childhood. My parent's idea of being sun smart was to issue us with a pill that was supposed to protect us from ill effects. Harvard has disproven the efficacy of pills protecting against the sun .. but my parents were not to know that at the time. They believed the adverts and happily popped pills for protection. Now, I am very fair, almost like I am a walking advert for bleach and at times people have commented that if my freckles could be joined, I might be able to have a decent tan. And, the pills didn't work. I still turned a delicate shade of puce, or crimson, or maroon. During the week, we walked to and from school in the blazing Zululand sun and there was many a day that I balanced my school suitcase on my head.. yes, it was a cardboard one that would now be considered an antique ... to protect my aches and pains from further attack. African women balance prodigious burdens on their heads for miles and miles, so, the concept of balancing things on my head was borrowed from the Zulu women's examples. Chatting away with friends and even at times bending down to steal a strawberry from a tempting garden bed along the way, without once losing my tattered suitcase from its perch on my perch. Hands free has a whole different meaning in Africa. And the weekend would arrive and off we would go back to the beach. Through the riverine jungle with its shady green spaces and onto the sand dunes and into the furnace. My mother said that some plants like to have their feet in Heaven and their heads in Hell. I must be a plant because on those far away Summer days I would run from the Heaven of the jungle and into the Hell of the hot sands, towels in hand and jumping and hopping until I once again could feel the cool of the wet sands, returning to the Heaven of soothing waves and gentle swells. Have you ever wondered about sea sand? Someone in our family once had a microscope and I would put blobs of river water on glass slides to watch the microorganisms wriggle and twist. And of course sea sand found its way onto a slide a time or two. Minute pieces of quartz, obsidian, rutile, shells, coral and fish bones laid bare in their beauty. The beaches near my home were full of Ilmenite and it would coat our feet with a powder of black dust. But it was the quartz that caught my fancy. Tumbled by waves and tides, sharp edges smoothed and polished by time, they would refract the light of the microscope and show off their amazing colours. A handful of sea sand is made up of innumerable bits. A thousand, two thousand fragments? Who knows? And then I thought, where does the sea sand stop? Does it coat the bottom of the sea from shore to distant shore? In the dark nether regions of unexplored sea beds, where the light never penetrates and waves hold no sway, is there fine dust, or quartz in great big chunks? Or are the tectonic plates bare and exposed? Showing us the edges of continental divides unfettered by sand? Is the sand being replaced by inorganic junk that us humans discard and will those pieces of plastic make their way to places where even sea sand is afraid to venture? As great whales and small creatures stir up the dredged remains of flotsam and jetsam, will my future self find other shapes in the sea sand? In Japan there are stars and circles, rods and cones shapes in their samples formed by the spines of sea urchins and tiny marine animals. Around volcanoes there are different elements. Basalt as black as night and even magnetic particles mix with the quartz. When hot lava hits the cold sea, it can shatter and turn into sand and form black beaches overnight. Pumice rocks from distant volcanoes float just above the rest like levitating magicians. Even gemstones can be part of sea shores. Rubies, diamonds, garnet, topaz and sapphire in minute amounts. Did you know that you can extract gold from sea water? 65 milligrams from one metric tonne of water. I grew up hearing tales of diamonds lurking in the sand dunes of Namibia. Washed down the Orange river and out to sea where the waves throw them back onto the beach near Luderitz. Entry is prohibited into the area for good reason, otherwise that might be my next holiday destination. Hopefully I would not need a microscope to see the diamonds in dunes. Recently Ancestry.com notified me that my DNA shows traces of Khoi San genetics. These ancient tribes are the original inhabitants of Africa and especially of Southern Africa. Does this give me part ownership in the geological wealth of the area? Can I walk onto the beaches of Namibia and claim tribal rights to the diamonds? Now wouldn't that be a holiday to remember? I would no doubt end up in prison and talk about Heaven and Hell, well, I can't imagine there would be much to be joyful about a prison? I have never been to Namibia. Barry went a few times to work in the diamond mines. He would go into the prohibited area with his spare parts for the broken and unrepairable engines (the salt air plays havoc with moving parts) and fix and tinker and repair what he could. On the way out was when the fun began. No item is allowed off the diamond mines (aka sand dunes) without x-rays, and yes, that includes the human elements. Workers place their hand on the sensor panel and if their heart rate is elevated they go into a 'special' room for further investigation. Diamonds are a great temptation for a quick payday. A handful of uncut stones can certainly make a dent in a cash flow problem. Anyhow, I digress. I only have 1% Khoi San in amongst my millions of genes. Obviously not the gene that allows me to tan. That gene did not make its way into my system at all. The gene to store fat in my derriere, well, that I did get. The Khoi San have a feast or famine lifestyle. Eating to excess when food is plentiful and fasting when it is not. Can I blame that gene for a binge on chocolates? Feast or famine aside, I cannot imagine living their lifestyle. Pastoral, eating mainly wild animals and cattle as well as root vegetables. But one thing they did do that I can identify with, is painting. Their rock painting skills were spectacular. In the Cederberg their animal creations parade across rock caves and tell the stories of hunters with bows and arrows. But, one of their most famous paintings is of a white lady. Could that be my distant ancestor? Theories abound as to who she might be. A Phoenician woman brought to Namibia by sailors? An Albino? Or a slave from Ireland or Scotland brought down to live amongst them. What would her world have been like all those years ago? She is considered a shaman with white body and arms, holding a goblet in one hand and a bow in the other. The White Lady is the most detailed drawing in the series at the Brandberg in Namibia. Sadly, tourists poured water over the paintings to make the colours stand out clearly and over time, the paintings have suffered. The authorities now ban bottles or bags in the area of the paintings. I can imagine sitting around a fire stirring up my pot of ochre clay, mixed with egg and blood to get just the right tone. (cattle blood perhaps) Charcoal and soot from the fire mixed with fat to create a lasting paint but it is the white paint that interests me. White clay mixed with animal fat would often be carried for miles to get the right effect of a flash of light on an animals flanks. A luxury. Whereas the soot and charcoal were on hand next to the fire, and ochre was ground from the rocks around them and added to the blood of cattle, white clay is only found in river beds. And river beds are not very common in the Namibian desert. The Smithsonian has dated these drawings back for 5000 years. And the images are just as vibrant as the day they were first painted. They (The Smithsonian) used AMS (accelerator Mass spectrometry) which only requires a small amount of paint to make its findings. Previous carbon dating would have destroyed the paintings themselves and it wasn't a great idea to do that just to know how old they were. The Khoi San are acknowledged as the first homo sapiens to inhabit Africa about 90,000 years ago. They believed in three spiritual beings. Firstly the ancestors, then God and finally the Eland antelope or unusual animals that were the conduit to the dead. I met a man once who crushed semi precious stones to make his paintings. The pictures were so alive and bright. Was that how the Khoi san people felt when their drawings were revealed to them? What if I had been there and taken some crushed quartz from the beach sand and mixed it with their concoctions to create amazing purples and greens, blues and reds? Would they have been impressed or scared? Were the artists revered and celebrated? Was there a ceremony to acknowledge the drawing of great hunts. Elephants and giraffes, antelope and hunters. My father would climb the Amahaqwa mountain every morning before breakfast and sit amongst the rock paintings of the Drakensberg. Here the white colouration was made with bird droppings and fat and applied with pieces of bone and feathers as well as fingertips. These people believed that the rock face was a thin veil between this world and the world of their ancestors and God. By drawing on this veil, they were communicating with those we could not see. They drew people who appeared to be flying through the air to represent their dead family members. Who said I have nothing in common with my 1% Khoi San genetic link? What do I do all day? I sit at a computer and endeavour to 'talk' to my ancestors. I tease out their stories and record them for future generations. I paint with words while they painted with the natural elements around them. We are more alike than we are different. They lived in caves and my cave is a house. They foraged for roots and meat on the great Savannahs and I forage at the local supermarket for bargains.

Friends and family, gather round and remember, two towels for African beaches. Never taste the paint of rock art in case it is made up of bird dung and think about the time immemorial that has created the sea sand that lies beneath our feet.