 May you Enjoy the Celebration of the Holidays Best Wishes for 2021 As 2020 comes to a close.. As this year of dreadful loss comes to a close, I realize I have thought frequently about the bongo drum. I would like to share it with you, in this season where we appreciate the love around us and hope for better for those suffering and alone. The Beauty of the Bongo Drum. Just outside the quiet, dusty Orpen gate, on the western edge of Kruger National Park in South Africa, there is a lean-to of a shop carrying handmade goods from local craftsmen. Hanging from the ceiling on one end and along the front were an array of drums and other percussion instruments of all types and sizes. They were handmade with leathers, rawhide pieces, bone and animal skins. The big bongo drums came in a vast array of tans and black, sands, browns, reds, and every imaginable shade of earth and animal tone in between. Pieces of animal skins were woven together with long cords of rawhide and strings of leather, pulled over a bone frame. They were so beautiful, so precisely made, it was hard to choose a favorite. Even as I meandered amongst them, trying to talk myself out of it, trying to convince myself of the sheer inconvenience of carting a large bongo drum around Africa for the next 3 weeks, I knew I wanted one. I told myself security might not let me take it on a flight, and I certainly couldn’t check it. Then I thought perhaps I’d see a similar one somewhere along the way, but we’d traveled quite far already and had not seen these before. Or maybe I should just get it “next time.” Lara laughed good-naturedly, and encouragingly, as she knew we were leaving there with a bongo drum. Everywhere we went, the drum stirred a response. Going thru airport security with the drum became predictable. A tall stern security gentleman would pick the drum up off the conveyer belt before it went thru the scanner. He would look it with furrowed brow, over and over, turning it around and upside down, shaking it to ensure it was empty. Then finally, each time—the stern face would break into a huge, slightly embarrassed, delighted smile as a beat or 8 on the drum could not be resisted. I will never forget the beauty of those smiles. Then there were the flight attendants who took great pains to find a safe space for our souvenir, as it refused to fit in all but the biggest overhead. It usually ended up at the front of the plane, passed from person to person, nary a one who could resist a beat or so on the drum and the laughter it brought. Everywhere we went, the bongo drum brought an unanticipated moment of joy and an opportunity to connect. My bongo drum brings back the wonderful memories of that trip; the grins of the people who probably thought we were nuts; the smiles of the Africans who appreciated that we loved something enough to go to all the trouble to lug it a long way home. And especially now, in this year, the beauty of the bongo drum is as a constant reminder to take a moment to do that thing, whatever that thing is, to take that moment, because you may never pass that way again.  In memory of my parents Margaret Lee “Baboo” Ayling and Robert Ian Ayling and our beloved cousin Mark William Kerr, fellow adventurers who left us this year and with love and gratitude to the friends who got me through. |
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