Africandawn

Dawn impala. I’m trying some new camera settings and they take a bit of getting used to. Quite a bit of noise on this one. Correctible with care. But I didn’t need a very high shutter-speed for this kind of thing.

Missed the mountain on the weekend thanks to weather. Got up long before dawn to get up there early. Was delayed by minibus taxis blocking the green light. Hurrah for private enterprise over public services! Got there though. No cultists on a Monday. I found I somewhat missed them. Thinking of my sibling who’s experiencing impaired vision due to COVID - a rare but not undocumented effect. Covid is real, it’s still here, and it’s still a serious disease. Holding thumbs. ...

Trinket is the agile one. So using the balcony railing as her runway doesn’t bother us. Skitten on the other hand - who’s twice been witnessed trying to jump onto a coffee table and failing - makes us fret every time. I took a run Friday when the maximum lockdown restrictions ended. But I need to rethink. The government’s curious decision to only allow exercise between 6 and 9 AM meant that my run by the river was like Oxford Street on a Saturday morning. Most people were wearing masks, but the social distancing is near impossible. . In general our government has given a very mixed performance during the pandemic so far. They locked down early and hard - which is good. But they’ve failed to provide adequately for the massive food insecurity, tolerated extraordinary levels of police brutality (including multiple murders of civlians), and made decisions on lockdown policies that lack any evidence base. It feels, as usual, like the conflict between the essentially competent (if unimaginative) faction of the president and his allies vs. the remaining kleptocrats from Jacob Zuma’s economic strip-mining regime - including the police minister, Bekhi Cele.

Pre-dawn on the Sabie River is when the night wails of the bushbaby mix with the victory cry of the fish eagle.