Roadside planters and imigongo

Cindy at enclos*ure3 Comments

Town planters in eastern Rwanda/enclos*ure

While traveling in southeastern Rwanda on Thursday, we stopped for lunch in Nyakarambi.  I liked the town’s roadside planters, which are painted in the graphic patterns of imigongo art.

Town planters in eastern Rwanda/enclos*ure

All the planters held rather dusty palm trees. We are in the middle of the long dry season, which will last until early September.

Imigongo paintings traditionally decorated the interiors of houses in this part of Rwanda. The raised designs are made with cow dung and painted with white kaolin clay and a black substance made from aloe plant sap and the ash of burned banana skins and Solanum aculeastrum fruit.  Other natural colors — red, grey, and ochre — are also used, and today’s artists often add representations of people and houses.

Nyakarambi has a cooperative and shop devoted to imigongo.  I added to my little collection with the piece below, which is about 12″ x 14″.

Imigongo painting, Rwanda/enclos*ure

I didn’t take any photos of the cooperative while we were there; the women weren’t working and their stock of paintings was small. But, several months ago, we were at Nyungwe Forest Lodge, which has several walls in the lobby displaying imigongo.

Imigongo at Nyungwe Forest Lodge, Rwanda:enclos*ure

Imigongo on walls at Nyungwe Forest Lodge, Rwanda:enclos*urePhoto just above by M. Koran.

A far corner in Rwanda

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The Rwanda-Tanzania border area, Rwanda:enclos*ure

If you imagine the shape of Rwanda as a rough square, as of Thursday I have been to three of its four corners: northwest, southwest, and now southeast.

Above is a view of the Rwanda/Tanzania border at Rusumo Falls. Tanzania is on the left side; Rwanda is on the right.

A one-lane bridge crosses the Akagera River — a natural line between the two countries at this corner.

The bridge at Rusumo Falls, Rwanda:enclos*ure

A second bridge is now being built just in front of the current span, with Japanese assistance.

The large empty area in the left top corner of the photo above is a parking area (under construction) for the many trucks that cross the border daily.

Just behind the bridge are the Falls.
Rusumo Falls, Rwanda:enclos*ureThe photo above and the two below were taken from the two sides of the bridge.

During the genocide in 1994, “an estimated 500,000 Rwandans — half of them within one 24-hour period” fled across this border to Tanzania, according to my guide book.*

Journalists standing on the bridge and looking down at the rushing water, counted the bodies of genocide victims “at a rate of one or two per minute.”

Shadow of the bridge at Rusumo Falls, Rwanda:enclos*ure

I took the very  first photo above from the top of the hill in the center of the picture below.

Hills above Rusumo Falls, Rwanda:enclos*ure

*Rwanda, The Bradt Travel Guide, by Philip Briggs and Janice Booth.

Vintage landscape: small side porch

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Latticework on side porch in Georgia, 1939 or 1944, by F.B. Johnston, Library of Congress/enclos*ure

Hill Plantation, Wilkes County, Georgia, 1939 or 1944, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

I love the latticework on this old side porch.

K Street in 1850

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K St. backyards, Washington, DC, Library of Congress/enclos*ureView from the second story of the home of Mrs. John Rodgers at Franklin Row, K Street, N.W., between 12th and 13th Streets, in Washington, D.C.

The watercolor* depicts the backyard and adjacent neighborhood and shows children standing on balconies.

It was painted by Montgomery C. Meigs.  Mrs. Rodgers was Meigs’s mother-in-law and the widow of Commodore John Rogers, a naval hero.

Despite the modest appearance of the yard and surroundings, Mrs. Rodgers was wealthy and socially well-connected.   Even well-to-do Washington in the 1850s seems to have had a somewhat ramshackle look.

You will need to click on the image to get a larger view.  Here’s what the downtown city block looks like now.

As a military engineer, Meigs left his mark on the capital.  In the 1850s, he supervised the building of the Washington Aqueduct and the Union Arch Bridge, as well as the wings and dome of the Capitol Building.  He also played an important role in the early design of Arlington National Cemetery, and he designed and supervised the construction of the Pension Building (now the National Building Museum).

*Via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Our garden: baskets in the trees

Cindy at enclos*ure11 Comments

Your head is a living forest
full of song birds.

— e.e. cummings

Weaver birds' nests in Rwanda/enclos*ure

During the last several months, a colony of weaver birds has been living in a pair of tall trees at the end of the front terrace.

Now I am not much of a birdwatcher, but I do love baskets.

Weaver birds' nests in Rwanda/enclos*ure

Attach some handles, and we have got the beginnings of a small income-producing cooperative.

I estimate that they built two to three dozen nests, mostly in the tree on the left below.

Weaver birds' nests in Rwanda/enclos*ure

I  haven’t seen the birds for a few weeks, so they may have moved on.  The ones I noticed earlier looked like large brown sparrows — which some experts put in the same bird family of Ploceidae.

Weaver birds' nests in Rwanda/enclos*ure

However, I may have been seeing only the females.  Most Ploceus weavers “display a strong sexual dimorphism,” according to the Bradt guide book for Rwanda: the females are brown, and the males are often predominately yellow and can have a black facial mask.  I have seen yellow birds like that around the garden, but I hadn’t connected them with the nest-building group.

Weaver birds' nests in Rwanda/enclos*ure

According to the guide book, 21 of the 101 African weaver species live in Rwanda.

Weaver birds' nest in Rwanda/enclos*ure

Several of the nests have fallen, so I’ve been able to get a better look at the weaving.  I found this one, in the photos above and below, just yesterday.

According to the Bradt* guide book,

[i]t can be fascinating to watch a male weaver at work. First, a nest site is chosen, usually at the end of a thin hanging branch or frond, which is immediately stripped of leaves to protect against snakes. The weaver then flies back and forth to the site, carrying the building material blade by blade in its heavy beak, first using a few thick strands to hang a skeletal nest from the end of a branch, then gradually completing the structure by interweaving numerous thinner blades of grass into the main frame. Once completed, the nest is subjected to the attention of his chosen partner, who will tear it apart if the result is less than satisfactory, and so the process starts all over again.

The first photo at the top of this post shows a part of a nest in the lower left side.  It may have been a victim of one episode of this “Nest Hunters Rwanda.”

Weaver birds' nest in Rwanda/enclos*ure

Above: a closer look at the weaving around the entrance hole — which I have seen placed anywhere along the side of the nest, from near the top to almost at the bottom.

Weaver birds' nest in Rwanda/enclos*ure

I took the photos of this fallen nest, above and below, a few weeks ago.

Weaver birds' nest in Rwanda/enclos*ure

Looking in the entrance hole above, it looks like there is a partial internal basket as well (you can see the top just right of center of the picture; the nest is on its side).

Weaver birds' nest in Rwanda/enclos*ure

Above: I pulled this one apart — which was not easy — to see how many of my garden plants I could identify.  I see pine needles, some acacia tree leaves, and lemongrass.  They may have also pulled strips off the leaves of the traveler’s palms and the heliconias.

About the same time, two hawk-like birds built a very large, but more conventional, nest in one of the same two trees.  The pair are brown and have an almost 3′ wingspan (and evidently don’t eat weaver birds).

Hawks' nest in Rwanda/enclos*ure

See the strip of white cloth woven through the side of the nest in the photo above?  For a couple of months, I’ve been finding all kinds of trash near the foot of this tree.  It was a really annoying mystery until I spotted the nest and realized that the birds must weave in bits of cloth, plastic, and paper.

I haven’t seen the couple in a few days, but yesterday, I saw a smaller version of them on another tree in the garden. [August addendum:  They’re still there, but no sign of young ones.]

April 17, 2014:  The weaver birds are back; more here.

Birds were the original architects, creating fantastic and extreme examples of blobitecture and parametric design long before any architecture critic labeled these styles. They are also summa cum laude engineers, able to transform cheap, insubstantial building materials into the most durable and cozy of homes.

— Chee Pearlman, in “Twigitecture,” The New York Times

*Rwanda, The Bradt Travel Guide, by Philip Briggs and Janice Booth.  And I have decided that I really need to order the Princeton Field Guides’ The Birds of East Africa.