Flutes and French

I was thinking about my friend Diana the other day, because of another E flute I have acquired. This one comes with a Raven.

Whenever I head out on a bit of a wander, I lug my flute around.  I never play it.  Or hardly ever.  I think about it a lot, and I carry it.  It's kind of like the French that runs around in my head.  It's a lot like the French that runs around in my head, actually.

My maternal grandmothers (the 10th great-grandmothers mostly) collided with Champlain and his men at Tadoussac, and Port Royal, and Trois Riviere, and Nippissing:  creating a complicated Metis geneology that pre-dates me by 500 years. Tragically, I am the first generation in 500 years that does not speak French. I understand French, sort of, if people go slow.  But I am mute when asked to speak.

I was thinking of Diana today because I'm lugging my flute again.  This time I'm travelling in Newfoundland.

I met Diana because of needing to figure out how I might play my first flute, the one with the eagle carving that I carried all through Spain while walking the Camino.  I tried to play a bit back then and planned to go to Diana to be taught.

Then before I went to Zimbabwe in 2011, I spoke with Diana again.  I knew I would bring my E Flute with me but I was also quite desperate to have a little A flute to bring too - one that would be better for my small hands.  I pestered Diana about it, in fact. 

Diana gave me an A flute.  I carried it with me but I didn't play that one either. 

Instead I gave it to Tonganai.  Tonganai is a very different man than most. He is, some might say, a schizophrenic.  But in the rural part of Zimbabwe there are no institutions, and no diagnosis or treatment of such things. 

So Tonganai simply is.  He used to be a math teacher, and now he is not. 

Tonganai is a  fast-talking, fast-thinking human being.  He's hard to follow. He is sometimes very close, and a tad bit frightening.  He gets agitated.  He believes in things that I can't see and hears things that I can't hear. 

Just before I left Tonganai came to my room with a gift he had made for me: a hand-made guitar made of scrap material, held together with bent iron from a railing and amplified by an empty beer can.  He played and sang to me. I have never been given such a beautiful gift.  Not ever.

It was hard to know what to say to Tonganai when he asked me to marry him and told me that no-one could love me the way that he did.  I have the love letters to prove it.  I told Tonganai that he was right - no one else has ever loved me that way.

And so I gave him the A flute. Tonganai understood the A flute completely and immediately began to play it as though he had played it all his life.  It was easy for him.

Maybe I will be able to master both my flutes and my French someday. Time will tell.  It's on the list.