as free as a bird...

I think no one who went through the walls of education and studied his grammar well would be unfamiliar with the classic simile, “as free as a bird”. There is that sudden sensation of freedom when you walk up the top of a hill and feel the gentle wind on your forehead blowing freely, meekly, and gently. Then out a blue you watch a sparrow flap its wings, then spread them out gracefully and cuts its flight through the air. It flies lightly like the wind.

This is an image that had always fascinated me. First as a lad who sprang from humble origins, born and raised on the mountainous sites of Mbiim. I used to hunt for birds, laying snares for them. But I hardly caught them. I had always admired something about them, it was this: that they moved freely, that they flew with grace.

As free as a bird! That is one of our illusions. The bird could be something other than free. It is attached to something. It is attached to its nest. The bird is responsible for its nest as the spider is responsible for its web. The bird is free because it is responsible.