Kenya
While staying recently on a lonely farm in the Highveld east of Johannesburg, I met a grey parrot that could sing ‘Die Stem’, South Africa’s apartheid-era national anthem. That bird was certainly out of step with the times. We all know that after Mandela’s 1994 election the rainbow nation switched to ‘Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika’. I was on the farm researching a story on the grisly culture of crime in a country about to host the World Cup. Incredibly, 18,000 murders are committed every year in South Africa. Before bedtime, my hosts put the huge dogs out and locked up the house against gang attacks. Sometimes the ‘hit squads’, as the farmers call them, fire through the house windows so even locked doors provide little comfort. ‘Vaderland!’ crooned the parrot. ‘Waar en trou as Afrikaners!’
It reminded me that my long-deceased great-aunt Marguerite once had a grey parrot.
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