Trees and birds

During the evening commute, at the Gishushu taxi-bus stop, a sudden and violent wind and rainstorm battered an old eucalyptus. I went through the bus stop half an hour earlier just as the storm was rising, and I clambered out of the mini-bus at the next stop where Phil was waiting for me as the rain began. We ran together for shelter at the Chez Lando bar. At Gishushu, the eucalyptus capitulated to the wind and crashed earthwards. Three people were killed and ten taken to hospital while we waited out the storm with a pot of African tea and watched the waiters rushing through the bar’s open patio under umbrellas. The road was closed, and our intended dinner companion was unable to join us.

A week or so later I read in the local paper that the city had decided to cut down 240 trees. They had carefully gone through the entire city and identified all trees that were a threat to motorists. That’s a lot of trees and a big job, but there will be no delay. The cutting is to begin on the coming Friday.

Kigali is a city of 800,000 people and many, many trees. The hillsides are dotted with green and the city is a surprising refuge of tree diversity. Rural Rwanda has terraced away almost all of its forest and now the dominant tree in the countryside is the imported eucalyptus, a greedy water consumer, but the city, in addition to imports, is home to a variety of indigenous trees.

The trees, combined with still existing wetlands in the valleys between the hills create a fantastic environment for birds. Our own yard hosts white-crested robin chats, speckled mousebirds,  varied sunbirds, the tropical boubou (that we nickname the alarm clock bird because of its call), fire finches, red-eyed doves, and many more including a new arrival this morning, a small bird, delicately blue and feeding from the ground. Pied crows, black kites, hadada ibis and little sparrow hawks fly overhead.  Many more are found at a local wooded lake, like this long crested eagle, taken by Jason Anderson on an early morning bird walk at a local reservoir lake.

I hear that most of the trees to be fallen are eucalyptus but that doesn’t make me any happier. At Gishushu, several have already joined the storm casualty. The paper reported that there were new trees ready to replace the fallen ones, but that doesn’t make me happy either.

I walk and bus through the city with a wary eye but this morning in city centre on the way to the opthamologist my mind is elsewhere as I cross the roundabout to the climbing road towards Hotel Milles Collines and the intersection that takes me to the doctor’s office. The last time I was here the roadside was generously graced with  Silky Oak, also an imported tree but one well loved by a diversity of birds. Here is a black cuckoo-shrike in a Silky Oak, with a paradise flycatcher flitting below.

Photo by Jason Anderson

But today I unexpectedly stumble into fresh stumps and workers loading the last pieces of trunk into a truck. By midday they will be finished. I count 20 stumps as I walk up the hill. Counting keeps my mind busy and the task of witness occupies me, a serious business that distracts me from my heart.

Maybe cutting down 240 trees will save a few lives but it is creating a less pleasant, less liveable city. It is only nine in the morning but the road is heating up quickly, the unfiltered sun embracing the bare heads of the workers loading the truck. In the empty openness, I feel myself diminished.

In equatorial sub-Saharan Africa, on the front lines of climate change, this removal of trees approaches the suicidal.

A magnificent old fig, in the lakeside town of Gisenyi, abutting the Congo border