The White Kudu by Gisela Hoyle
In one of its many, too many incarnations The White Kudu was called Children of the Rain – like the little black Gashemshe birds, which appear after the rain in the Kalahari. When we were growing up, we had a rain-bird, too. It was the Vlei Loerie (in English Burchell’s Coucal – a much less evocative sounding name) The bird was believed to sing just before the rain and it does have a wonderfully fluid song, like bubbling water rising and falling. At the age of about 12 one naturally becomes suspicious about such stories, wanting facts suddenly and no longer trusting the folkloric mythology which one accepted so happily before. I don’t think our scientific investigations yielded much, though I do remember my older brother talking at length (as he did) about air pressure and levels of humidity, which after all sounds no less fantastical than that a bird should herald with joy the coming of rain. And the wonder of hearing her song was not diminished thereby. And often in drought, even when far away from home, I find myself straining to hear that song. 
Years later I was living in the Eastern Cape during a very dry summer in the early nineties. I remember one long afternoon with my two toddlers getting ratty and restless with the heat. I thought of all the longing for rain we had felt as children and decided to take them both out into the garden and ‘do’ a rain dance with them. I explained to them what we were doing and how we were not going to stop dancing till it rained. Not very sensible, I suppose, given the chances of actual rain but I think I figured they would fall asleep eventually . . . anyway, we danced and danced and it rained. It was a strange, small experience, magnificent in its own way and it restored for me, if not entirely the faith of childhood, at least the joyous mystery of that kind of trust, which rallies again and again, no matter how often reality fails to live up to it:
Rain dance
We lie in the shade of our peppercorn tree
smelling of mud,
which peels and cracks, drawing tight
about our ankles. As the sun
sucks the last drops of water
from the charged world.
Impatiently we listen
for the Loerie’s bubbling song:
Promise of rain
and breathe deeply the dangerous air
hoping to catch that impossibly wet-earth
Rain-coming smell.
But the air is still.
No bubbling song descends.
Instead the afternoon is
torn by the anguished cry
of the fish eagle,
catching sight of silver scales
floundering in thickening mud.
Much, much later: a rain dance.
Circling heels stamping;
calloused balls tapping ever more lightly, whirling
faster and faster: despairing – passing time.
The glaring red iron-rich earth
burning bare feet as they plead.
The drops begin to fall.
Tiny whirls of dust around our toes
that dare not stop but dance no more alone.
Faces turn up
thirsty still, and half in disbelief -
reaching for the blessing.
Exultant tongues
seek the burning silver slices
and laugh in wonder
at the power of feet.
Both the Loerie and the blessing of rain play their part in the unfolding of the story of The White Kudu and I hope that others will be as delighted as I am to find that they are real. And the love of rain, even after years of living in England for years now, has not entirely been destroyed either.
There are some wonderful images of Burchell’s Coucal on the Internet, some of them can be found here: www.pbase.com. I am afraid I do not have any of my own.
Gisela