Holey Vision is the title of Tanvir Bush’s blog and well worth reading regularly. She has an awesome spirit and a wonderful way of writing. She suffers from a degenerative eye disease and writes beautifully too about her guide dog Grace. The two of them are pictured above – having fun!

Here she writes about the progress of Mike Bush – her dad – suffering cancer – my doctor at the Minbank Clinic in Lusaka for years and a very good friend. On a sadder note she writes of the wanton and despicable death of Mark Jellis, late son of John Jellis, very well known orthopedic surgeon in Lusaka. He and his family have also been good friends and Clients over the years. Tanvir writes:

“My Dad is given the thumbs up and a 99% all clear after a follow up check on his stem cell treatment. He flies back to Lusaka immensely relieved. He’ll have to go back again in three months but for the moment it is all really pretty damn wonderful.

“Then, on the Wednesday night my sister calls to say that Mark has died. Mark J was my friend, the older brother of a childhood buddy in Zambia. He was a lovely, handsome, gentle farming (he didn’t farm ‘gentles’..I mean he WAS gentle..and he farmed too..) man who spoke fluent chiNyanja and was a serious fundi of all things ‘Zambian bush.’ He played guitar, drank whiskey, loved to jitterbug (and had once pulled me, back then a rather stodgy teenager, onto the dancefloor and thrown me skywards and spun me around until I was dizzy and besotted.)

A few weeks ago he went to collect wages for his farm workers and a gang held them up and robbed them, shooting, for no apparent reason, Mark directly in the head and chest. And even then..and even then ..he clung on for six weeks undergoing extreme operations in a hospital in SA but his injuries were too much. Violent death makes bloody rents in the world. People stagger listlessly, confused by the news, unable to know what to say to each other, to the close families left behind, the parents, the children, the partners. Those rents don’t heal like tears from other deaths. They go on bleeding for a long, long time. They make us feel shabby with helplessness, angry and weary.

Edani Bwino mzanga, wrote his friend Miranda. Travel well. She posts a photo of Mark on Facebook. He is smiling hugely, all blond hair and teeth, the afternoon sun golden on his face and the big blue sky fading to evening behind him.”

This piece touched my heart.