Whispers of Africa is a unique combination of the arts of drawing, writing and poetry with the aim of bringing the animals of Africa to life in the reader’s mind.
Whispers of Africa began its life when the author, Ray Harris was asked by a friend to whom he owed much, if he would do a series of animal pictures for him. His friend, Tom Jordaan was making coasters from toughened glass, and wanted images of the ‘Big Five’ for the purpose of screen-printing the images onto the glass so they could be fired into the coasters and sold in sets. The proviso was that they had to be clear images done in monochrome. Ray, anxious to repay his friend, set about doing his best. As it turned out, he did far more than was required, and the images turned out to be so finely detailed that they could not be effectively screen-printed.
The result of this was that Ray filed the drawings away with many others he’d done previously, and forgot about them.
Prior to this, Ray spent hours in the quiet evenings at sunset, doodling and writing short sketches and prose with a poetic flavour, as the mood took him. These too were filed away and forgotten.
Then one day, sitting on a rock on the edge of a mountain cliff, he was inspired by the antics of the Baboons in the area, to write a poem capturing the spirit of the Baboon rather than just noting down facts. He was quite pleased with the result, and went on to write a few more poems about some of the animals of Africa that he knew so well.
A year or two later, on a farm in the Northern Transvaal, he was stalked by a leopard, and escaped the situation, outmanoeuvring it through his knowledge of the animal. It was nevertheless a frightening experience, and in his somewhat shaken state, he had an epiphany – to bring together the images, prose and poems of the animals of Africa and produce it in book form. Whispers of Africa is the result.
