It all started with an argument. 

My daughter, through bilateral negotiations that would have put Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy to shame, had persuaded me that taking her to McDonald’s for lunch was a really cool idea. And along with her Happy Meal she got a peculiar blue figurine.

On the way home we began working out what this figurine was, and deducted that it had something to do with the Olympic Games. The dead giveaway was the Olympic rings on the front of a tiered podium, the name Oceania and some Chinese writing.

“What do these rings mean, Mom?”  she asked, and I grasped the opportunity for a little impromptu education. “That’s the Olympic symbol,” I said. “The five interlocking rings represent the five areas of the world that take part in the Games, and symbolises how sport brings them together. Each colour represents a different region.”

That’s when we started working out which colour represented which region. “Well, Oceania is blue,” I said definitely. “Asia must be red, the Americas yellow, Europe green and Africa black. Or something.”

“No, Mom,” she said. “According to this map, Africa is green.”

“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t quite see Africa as being green – compared, say, to Ireland, which is so green it makes your eyes water. Africa is more, well, gold and red and blue and, and…

I immediately fell into a reverie, partly inspired by the smell of the jasmine by the side of the road and partly by the fact that, after a few months of winter I really, really missed the smell of African veld after rain, when it does indeed become the green continent. Not the overpowering green of Europe, but the light and olive and silver and yellowy and bluey and greeny green of Africa.

That was when I thought about summer mornings with the promise of the hot day to come, the smell of the flowering creeper on the wall, the sun stroking one’s back and the warm breeze in one’s face. I thought about the towering cumulus clouds on the highveld, the short cloudbursts that leaves the smell of hot wet dust, the thunderstorms in the Drakensberg mountains, the strike of the sun on the water of lakes and rivers, the chant of isicatimiya when Zulu men sing of home. I thought of watermelons, and swimming pools, and cut grass and eating outdoors under leafy trees. I thought of warm rain and growing things, and fresh fruit and the long road beckoning with the promise of summer holidays. I got pretty tearful, actually.  Who would have thought that a gimcrack Olympic doll would have made me patriotic?

But back to reality - there was still a mystery to solve. Which countries equalled which colours? So when we got back home we headed resolutely for the encyclopaedia. And here begins the lesson:  the five rings were dreamed up by Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin, to represent the five major geographical areas of the world. Antarctica is there, but because it is white you can’t see it. No, only joking.  Antarctica is not there because it does not have human athletes. Penguins don’t count.

The colours don’t represent any countries, but rather the flags of the different countries – every single country’s flag has at least one of these colours in it. A rather interesting legend has sprung up about these rings:  just before the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the German Olympic organiser Carl Diem organised a symbolic lighting of the flame at Delphi in Greece, where the Games are supposed to have begun.  At that ceremony, a large stone was carved with the five rings.  A later travel writer (really, these travel writers…) decided that the stone had always been there and that the rings were a mystic Greek symbol.  Well, why spoil a good story with facts?
Oh, and another thing: the Olympic flame (The Eternal Flame, which supposedly burns for eternity on Mount Olympus) is snuffed out after every Games.  At the closing ceremony a fanfare sounds, the flame is doused, the anthem is played, and the flag is lowered and carried out and put in mothballs for the next four years.
And finally – another fascinating bit of Olympic trivia:  those strange figurines given away by McDonald’s are actually the Chinese Olympic mascots.  They are called Fuwa, the Friendlies, and the five dolls are Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and Nini.  Together their names mean “Beijing welcomes you”.  Each one represents a different cultural icon, the fish, panda, flame, antelope and swallow, and contains elements of Chinese folklore, fauna and flora, and (believe it or not) Neolithic history.  Contrast this to Australia, whose Olympic symbol (unofficially, we must admit) was Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat.
The Chinese figures are actually very cute, and are worth researching to find out more about their symbolism and meaning.  It made my opinion of the Chinese soar.   I strongly suggest you look them up.
It will make you look at the Beijing Olympics in a whole new light.  And just by the way, it has disproved one of my pet theories – that there is nothing remotely nutritious about McDonald’s!