Word: bougainvillea
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...messenger unaware, the pith-helmeted colored, or mixed-race, mailman pedaled his bicycle past the bougainvillea that lined the quiet suburban street. He stopped and rang the bell at the home of a theology professor at South Africa's Stellenbosch University. A tall, stoop-shouldered man came to the door. Curious, then amazed, the mailman watched the professor open the envelope, read the brief message and suddenly begin weeping. The mailman had no way of knowing they were tears...
Aubelin Jolicoeur lives here in a stucco house that looks out over a garden. As the sun sets behind his terrace, the bougainvillea, like a tropical cliche, begins to cast its mysterious evening shadows. "The government absolutely believes in elections," says Jolicoeur, whom Greene immortalized in The Comedians in the character of the vicious -- but charming -- Petit Pierre. He sips at his champagne. "Why, Bill called me in just this morning," he says, referring to General Regala. "All he could talk about was elections, elections, elections. For three hours. He asked me to begin a series of profiles...
...beauty that led Governor Simon van der Stel to set up a holiday camp there in 1679. The university started in 1866 as the Stellenbosch Gymnasium, or high school. Today its low-slung buildings, white with red tile roofs, are thickly shaded by ancient oaks and framed by cerise bougainvillea. Even the trees are considered national monuments. When one of the giant oaks along Dorp Street dies, tree surgeons quickly operate and fill it with cement to keep it standing. The whole town testifies to a deep concern with preserving buildings, traditions and ideas...
...cliffsides like cockleburs. Jade plants, looking like so many butter beans on a stick, grow high and thick out here, form hedges, give privacy. (Back East, they live, if they live, in pots.) With air soft on the cheek, a boisterous green ocean in view, blazing red bougainvillea at the back, it is suddenly clear what has pulled so many souls to the City of the Angels-a place just as easily perceived, on another day, as one of the ugliest, most unlivable towns in all America...
Warring tribesmen had called a tem porary truce in honor of the Pontiff's visit. At Mount Hagen, from an altar covered with a thatched roof and lavishly decorated with hibiscus, orchids, bougainvillea and battle shields, the Pope made a plea for permanent peace to the crowd of almost 130,000. Then he gave Communion to warriors who glistened with pig fat and wore head dresses of black hawk feathers and crimson and golden plumes from the bird of paradise...