Color Me Waterless

You know the colour of water if you live in the desert. Water is not colourless. It has more colours than the rainbow. We cannot take a pair of scissors and slice the rainbow, because colours are one.

Nature is a genius. It knows that if we could slice the rainbow, the one percent of men who rule the world through money, would slice it into residential, commercial and recreational real estate or should I say solar estate?

Water is colourless to us, but not in essence. Water is life, that is why it has a myriad of colours hidden from the human eye. We seldom say rain is colourless and that is understandable. We are myopic beings. Water comes from rain, but we see the world in blocks. We only relate to things we can see like rivers.

What I find fascinating are mountain streams. The water is colourless to us, but in reality it has so many colours, they force themselves out of the mighty rock and sashay down to god knows where.

The sun is also to blame I guess. It gives wild berries, corn, guava, mango, paw paw and strawberries their colour. Trees and shrubs have green curtains during the summer. Some people will go on vacation this winter. They’ll come back brown from the sun. Envious friends will say, ‘Oh what a great colour!’

Therefore, water plays second fiddle to the sun, although it is life. People who were born and live in the desert know more about water’s unseen colours than us.

Water is colourless we say, until floods come visiting. It turns muddy as torrential rain vacuums the land. We see colour when floods carry items like uprooted trees, a child’s beach ball, clothes, soda cans, plastic and discarded blue face masks.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

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