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Wednesday, August 1, 2012

The Seagull

You may have read the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. If you haven't, then you really have missed out on one hour of the most amazing reading on the planet. The story is one about standing up and being different, doing things that are not 'everyday' for a seagull. It has many analogies to our everyday lives and most people find a personally touching moment or two in reading it. Part of the story is about a seagull called 'Kirk Maynard Seagull', a disabled seagull with damaged wings that learns to fly. For me, and others who know what we do in the bush, the story of 'Kirk Maynard' reminds us of Lydia. In fact, Lydia herself loves the book, given to our library by Onni and Angelika earlier this year.

When reading the book, young Ghanaians struggle to grasp 'what a seagull is', since most of them have never seen one. Therefore, when we stopped in the car park of Walmart in Oshkosh last week and a seagull landed next to the car, the excitement amongst Patricia and Lydia was in-containable. Opening the doors of Clay's van (the Webmaster), cameras in hand, two young women ran across the hot tarmacked surface, dodging trolleys, just to get a closer look and hoping for a picture of this 'rare' bird.

Passers by stared and smiled, wondering if this was a precursor to a TV reality show wondering what on earth was going on. For the 'seagull watchers' it was a moment of pleasure, the coming to life of the images in a book that has touched their lives in many ways.

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