Kermis

The school Kermis happened last weekend. We were very busy and a trifle stressed - and to top it all I had flu. Looking back I think my flu added something to the Kermis experience. I have always been one who suffers from fevers. Rudolph Steiner is very positive about all that - saying something along the lines of fevers helping on to move from one milestone to the next. I think I believe him.

I had been asked to do decorate Grade 10's stall - the Teetuin - probably because I bailed when it came to having any talent in baking - peppermint tert, melk tert, souttert or any other tert. I went at it with a will, basically packing up my kitchen, and raiding others' farmyards - stating that the theme was going to be 'Shabby Chic' or 'Oumas Kombuis' or something along those lines.

L and I arrived to set it all up at 6 in the morning. It was still dark and I was coughing, but we both felt a strange excitement, which we realized, watching the pink and orange sun rise, was because we felt like we were on a shoot. With the car piled high with decor bits and pieces, we could have been rushing ahead of the actors, cameramen and crew - memories of another life lived, not so long ago. Still, a teacher arrived with a huge abundance of lavender hacked from her farm garden - which provided the final finishing touches to a rather quaint tea garden setting - even if I do say so myself. Feverishly working took on a whole new meaning, and it was only 7 o clock!

I worked at that stall until about half past one, dimly aware that I was surely doling out my virus with just about every cup of coffee, tea and slice of lemon meringue I served. I doubt if I have ever spoken Afrikaans so well, it peeled effortlessly off my tongue, together with some English for the visiting few.

L slaved away over a hot braai all day at Grades 7's stall. I wandered over at some point seeking anything that was not sweet and we shared a sosatie amongst the smoke. By 2 I was feeling pretty grim. We had sold out every slice of every tart or cake, and I had been released to teeter to the side lines to watch the match of the day - the first rugby team playing some school from PE. I don't, as a rule do rugby, but somehow a casual glance turned into total involvement, and I found myself joining THAT mother (every school has one) who paced the line cheering like a banshee. Only I was hoarse to begin with, but I joined my croak where I could. Probably it was because of 'my' koshuis boys who were playing and I care about, suddenly. It all ended in fisticuffs and a yound lad being carried of on a kermis table with his neck in a brace in the true spirit of the game. He is okay now, thank God.

I heard from someone before I left, to go and climb into bed, that our stall had won, being the best in terms of decoration. My head was spinning, but I felt absurdly happy about that as I sank down into the pillows.

This Saturday morning saw us rising up to attend yet another Fees - this time in Misgund. Autumn is busy being particularly fine and we drove the half hour, with orchards turning yellow and red on either side of the road. All these fairs are Harvest Festivals really, held by the NG Kerk in the small dorpies, and the Misgund Fair was no different. We bought pockets of oranges very cheaply, homebaked bread and the obligatory roosterbrood, pancakes and bakkie of curry and rice. We sat with friends and drank coffee out of styrofoam cups, while Georgia cheered on the first netball team which all her friends play in. The music was loud , and is the one thing I struggle with. Platteland dorpies have a certain taste in music which takes me back to those 'Springbok Hits' records of the 70's - something I had pleasantly forgotten - until now. L and I had enough pretty quickly, but we left Georgia to hang around and hitch a ride home with a friend. Looking back I saw her with her new gang, demonstrating her skill in throwing up popcorn and catching it in her mouth!
There is little sophistication in the Langkloof, I thought, regretting not having had a portion of 'Bazaar Pudding'. Never mind, there might be another Fees next weekend, and we will be there.

Home and away

Things are hotting up here in Joubs. Life, in a small town can get claustrophobic, especially when you, your husband and your children all 'work' at the same place. The school and the koshuis (the foodhouse - how appropriate!) are consuming us all at the moment.
A month to go until it all closes down, but till then we have to get through
- teething problems at the koshuis (I am being euphemistic here - you understand!)
- writing exams (the children)
- setting exams (L)
- practical drama exams (yours truelly)
- marking tests, tasks and exams (my darling L)

So, last weekend we headed out, L and I. For weeks I had been muttering about needing to be in a city, be amongst people I don't know....
And whining on about seeing the sea, like some landlocked sailor, or wind blown seagull tossed way off course.
A solution presented itself - a meander to Port Elizabeth. We left the children, they had no desire for shops, or even for sea breezes. I am very fond of PE, having grown up there. It is, as someone said, a ten minute city, although many also say that they lose direction there, get lost. I could never get lost, feeling it is only those Capetonian types who are used to steering their vehicles by the rudder of that huge mountain that get disorientated.
Port Elizabeth has only a blue sky horizon, but I love its hills and kloofs gashing their overgrown, green way through its centre, under bridges and cutting relentlessly through suburbs.
I am not a shopper, and I was no sooner in a mall than I wanted out. Out, out to the sea again....the wonderful sea and the sky.

L and I ate fish and calamari and drank wine in a sort of swanky restaurant with a glorious view of the sea, so close we could smell it! And towards the end, with my head light from wine and sea air ,I too leant on the balcony railing as a pod of over 50 dolphins blessed us with their presence. I watched them, as others ran down to the waters edge, and stopped there, unable to get closer. Wonderful, untouchable they were, arching over the waves, unconscious perhaps, but everyone thought they had come just for them, probably, before they headed out to the deep sea.

Anyway Port Elizabeth was never going to be big enough for me right now. I think I have a longing for a place like London, Paris, maybe even New York!

But nothing like that is possible right now, so we returned, having found a Twee Rivieren friend parked in the carpark next to us. Home was definitely not far away.

This weekend was the Krakeel Bazaar. The dominee told us it is not to be missed. That morning we took too long, arriving at 11 when it had started at 10. Just about everything was sold out. But Krakeel is a pretty place, apart from its entrance through the poverty area, but the houses are quainter that Joubertina, the church hall all old stone, with a huge shady tree. We bought braaivleis and roosterbrood, all other tables were stripped bare, everything having miraculously vanished. Still, the company was good (Krakeel attracts, it seems, some 'kunstig' folk ), and we settled down on kitchen chairs outside - like so many people in Provence, and waited for the auction to begin. It was an amusing one, obviously providing an event whereby the locals can make largish donations to the church by paying R700 for a very ordinary tart, or R250 for a bottle of outlandish green witblitz.
A friend of ours bought one of those bottles, and we all sniffed it, before the daring amongst us sipped some from the bottle lid ( the sun was only just over the yardarm...) They declared themselves disappointed, the sip not having delivered the expected kick of a mule. They muttered that they expected that only peppermint flavour had been used - the dominee was particularly down at the mouth!

We had to leave early, exam papers awaited us.
It might not be New York, I thought to myself, but in terms of a cultural experience this life rates quite highly.
Tucking into my cold chop and roosterbrood at home I felt quite satisfied, and determined to have some of that green poison next time I visit!

Joubertina

We now officially live in Joubertina - or Joub Joubs as we affectionately call it. Thats a surprise - for us ,I mean. We never intended this to happen. We came to the Langkloof to live in Twee Rivieren. We left Cape Town for Twee Rivieren. Our dream, our road led there. Our path, we believed, led there. Joubertina was just the nearest dorp, a mere 5km away, a place we would buy supplies. Nothing more. It just goes to show...

Joubertina is not a pretty place really. It is flanked by wonderful mountains on either side, the Tsitsikamma and the Kouga, and deeper in, the Baviaanskloof. The main street is forsaken, litter strewn. There are no tree lined sidewalks, like other dorps, no quaint shops. The signs are mostly those red ones, sponsored by Coca cola. The shop fronts are uninspired. No broad stoeps here, no broekie lace, no shady tables under trees.

We have lived in Greyton. Picture postcard perfect as it is, one wanders down the oak lined lanes, browses in the many interesting shops, sips real capuccinos at a variety of restaurants and coffee shops. Not so Joubertina.
In search of koeksusters the other day, I went and stood in the queue at the take out chip and burger place where they are available, freshly made from a stainless steel bowl next to greasy frankfurters. I was surrounded by people from Africa, maybe Zimbabwe, Malawi or South Africa. I loved it, paper strewn, jostling, loud. Many, I suppose, would not.

Joubertina is that kind of place. A koeksuster kind of place - bought at the greasy spoon on the main road.
Actually you really have to know the locals in order to know where to buy things.
I have compiled some examples to clarify:
- the most beautiful bunch of exquisitely fragrant roses (VERY cheap - I believe) bought for me by L from the local hairdresser.
- homemade rusks, aniseed or buttermilk - we buy weekly from the shop that also does hair (a different hairdresser), sells coffins , milktart, bully beef and organises my contact lenses!
- the cheapest and best cheese is to be had from the local haberdashery store, who does clothing alterations, serves tea and satisfies all our stationery and small gift requirements.
- one of the best caterers in town takes orders from her place of employment - the bank!
- the cheapest and freshest milk - straight from the cow is available from the hardware store, who also sells second hand furniture. Fresh spinach is also often on offer!
- all laundry requirements are met by a take out shop, advertising pies and chips on a blackboard outside.
- I have found some great second hand clothing from a shop in town, and if there is nothing for me that day I can always buy some homemade jam, wool or fresh herbs in pots!
- immediate medical emergencies are normally diagnosed and prescribed for by the local pharmacist
- all clothing requirements are met by the three shops owned by neither Afrikaans or English speaking Chinese - ofcause they also sell radios, TVs and bicycles
- a courier service is run from the car repair shop who also meets all glass requirements and
- there is a great little deli at the liquor store

We know that there are many other services still to be discovered, but as all is not immediately obvious it is by word of mouth, and that word is definitely an Afrikaans one.
Anyway, we now live in the prettiest street in town - a long one that includes the school, the church, the dominees house, doctors surgery, the clinic and the sport field at the end. The people are pretty real. What you see is what you get. Mostly they are 5th or 6th generation, with hardly a transplanted city person in sight. We know all the English folk. And they, the towns folk, farmers, shop owners and everyone else it seems, knows us.

The people are friendly to us, allowing me to speak my very poor Afrikaans, rather than speak English. They just don't, speak English I mean. Everyone can understand it very well though.
Twee Rivieren, the home of all the English inkomers is often visited by us and our children. They all remain our closest friends. We miss them all, but with much to do, and much to keep us entertained, we are doing nicely here in Joubs!

Writing again

It has taken me 4 days to get to this point. We have not posted a blog for longer than that, I know, but we have had valid excuses. Moving, was one. No internet ,was the other. For the last 4 days the reason has been Fear of Writing.

Its a strange thing. A little like a fear of flying. Writing to me is one of my most pleasurable activities. The odd thing is, mostly, I avoid it like the plague. I have a writer friend in Cape Town that put it all brilliantly (she is a brilliant writer). Without quoting her exact words, what she wrote is along the lines that she, a lover of writing, on the whole, has to con herself to do it. She pretends to be merely scribbling some thoughts down, when actually writing her first draft. She has to unplug the phone, otherwise she will HAVE to speak to a dozen needy friends. I know exactly what she means.

I promised myself and my husband that I would write today. Since then a cup of coffee was essential, three hours with friends was necessary, homemade pizzas for lunch was a promise that had to be kept, a swept carpet could not wait, and a conversation with my husband was the desire of my heart.

I was tempted to sit down at the laptop by two sweeties left next to it by a subversive husband. I have eaten one whilst I opened the lid and got connected. The other awaits my completed blog. I have to bribe myself.

This new flat ( we call it an 'apartment') because of the divine high ceilings and the long carpeted passage, has a snug little corner for me to write in. I have a blue table, its surface covered by my assortment of moleskines, journals and large A4 books full of my scribblings. I sit on a tapestry covered chair, and have a rose bowl close at hand with a single fragrant red rose beside me. L picked it specially for me from our new garden. My children are in Jethros room at the bottom of the passage. I have become an ardent fan of passages. No more open plan for me. The row of doors is wonderful, with each one in their place and space.

And yet with all this, getting down to the business of writing is still almost an impossibility some days. I wrote a rather bad book in England years ago, and the only way I got down to it was to say goodbye to my ex husband in the morning, lock the door, draw the curtains on the bleak landscape, turn up the heating and stay in my pajamas. I never combed my hair or washed my face, forcing myself to skulk indoors in silence it anyone knocked on my door. At about 12 I would arouse myself from my musings and have a brisk shower. In order to write I had to keep myself prisoner.

I am attempting to write a book again, wading my way through my first draft, pulling ideas from somewhere inside my head. When I do it, generally, I am alone in the house, it is totally silent, and I am grumpy. I hate any disturbance whilst finally engaged with the task at hand, and I have felt my mind do its shift to the blissful creative space. Writing is elation.

Maybe it is my built in aversion to anything addictive, steering my ship to avoid anything in my life that might take me captive. Writing, I know, is that powerful. I could find myself in some rotting house by the sea, all alone, hammering away on a keyboard, and dodging people.

Not really, but it would not be that bad. Right now I live opposite the school, dividing my time between family, drama and the koshuis kitchen. Ofcause I will find the space and place to write, because, although I am generally on the run, the urge overtakes me, like now.
Time for that sweetie!

Baggage

Sometimes packing makes me nauseous. I think it might be all that bending and reaching. I feel light headed and sick to my stomache. It happens every time. I think I was just created to travel light.

When one packs you always have to make decisions. What to keep, and what to discard. I get so exhausted with it all that I have an urge to throw most things away. If I even try Georgia digs them all out again. No black bag is safe from her - every tossed item is suddenly a treasure!

There is of cause the joy contained in rediscovered things. I can get caught up in reading fascinating stories on old newspapers, pausing midway as I wrap a cup, a vase. An item of clothing, dug out from a forgotten suitcase brings pleasure for a day.... A favourite book is flipped through. But really, I know , I was created to travel light.

As a young woman I went through a stage when I hitch hiked a lot. I loved it. The freedom , standing like a cactus on a desert of tar, my arm stuck out, thumb pointing heavenward. I loved the feel of my canvas rugsack between my ankles, everything that mattered to me contained therein. There is no doubt that there was a risk involved ( my sister hitch hiked only once, and was nearly killed in a head on collision). But I did it for years, addicted to that one stopped car, getting in or out, with no commitment, no debt to be payed. I was kept safe, that I acknowledge, and am grateful.

I remember holding a warm puppy on my lap once, as the old man who picked me up wound his way through the Ciskei hills. There was a crazy ride with two funny Scots ladies, through the aloes landscape around Grahamstown, and I sat on a bagpipe by mistake on the backseat. I leapt from moving cars at stop streets twice, instinct telling me that that would be best, and traveled from the sleepy town of Port Alfred in an aeroplane car at 210km an hour to PE. One day I just stopped, got out a car and knew it was my last ride. I started to pick up baggage after that.

But not much. Even when we returned from England we arrived  back to SA with two backpacks and one baby on the hip and another in my belly.  Now, in my forties I carry a lot with me. L and I have shed much over the years. But we, tortoise like, have to carry a home with us. And all this stuff is home - all this baggage.

In psychological terms I suppose the word baggage has a negative connotation. But lately I would disagree with that. It makes us who we are. A friend once told me that I rearrange my  same old things in a different way in every home she has known me in - and there have been many. It sets me to thinking. All this stuff we carry, good and bad, beautiful and not so, is who we are, metamorphosizing through the years.

I am still dodging the packing. I have had many kind offers of help. We, as a family are picking our way through our stuff, slowly. Mostly I am day dreaming about our destination - the place we will be when all this is done. How I will place a chair, a quilt, a row of carved wooden animals.

I am wishing I could be picked up suddenly, like a car swishing passed and pulling over onto the gravel, some stones crunching under my shoes as I run towards a door being opened, a friendly face behind the wheel, and there I go, moving  effortlessly on.

In Matthew  6:19, it says: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal." So maybe I'm on the right track...

A moving experience

We are moving. Moving is something we do. Often. The mere thought of the labour involved makes me feel nauseous and dizzy, but I know that it too will pass, and we have already packed ten boxes. Those who know us well will not be surprised. The great thing is, we are only moving five kilometers, up the road to Joubertina.

I have moved so often that it does not take long for a house to become a home to us. We have stayed in such an assortment of dwellings, and I loved them all, in different ways. The incredible thing is, they were all beautiful, and we were blessed to have lived in them, for different reasons.

My parents lived in the same house for thirty years, and I lived with them for my whole life, until I moved out. But, in my adult life I have moved about 50 times! Sometimes across continents, sometimes cities, towns, around the corner, next door. I don't know why it has been like that - it just has.
So, we are doing it again...

Looking back I am so grateful for all the homes. There were the seaside homes, with the waves lapping at the bottom of our road, a mere 2 minutes walk away. There was the country home, with a wide verandah with a mountain view spread out before us. A favourite was the lagoon house, with a panhandle down to the lagoons edge, visited by pink flamingoes, and me, quite alone, swimming out silently amongst the ducks.

Long ago there were the England houses, double glazed, cosy with coal fires, snow on the road outside the cold stone walls. There was the semi in Observatory which God chose for me to be in when my first husband left, an unlikely haven, but a shelter it was, at the time. I remember a suburban house with fondness, my children little, L and I and them becoming a family there.

A swimming pool, or some watering hole, featured in most of the recent homes, because I love water. There has been no water here in the Langkloof. A drought stricken place lately. Nevertheless, there has been living water here, in a very real way for us. And, of cause there is always the Kouga, and the rock pools, and the big blue dam up in the Hoek.

But now we are moving to town. This time there is definitely only one reason why. It is because we really believe that God wants us to go. There is work waiting there that needs to be done. Children that need to know that He loves them. And more than that - we want to go.

So, goodbye, goodbye dear outside room, beneath the beloved Syringa Tree. Goodbye the open view out from our bedroom window, down the orchard valley of Twee Riviere, and up the steep mountains of the Tsitsikamma. Goodbye Louis sheep strolling through our land, morning and evening, the shepherd cries, the little bleating lambs. Good bye the vegetable garden, so overgrown now - thank you for an abundant crop - we ate well. Goodbye the dirt road, the drunken wanderings and voices passing by. We said we would live in this house for a year , and wait, and see what God wanted us to do, here in the Langkloof. It will be exactly a year.I will miss all we leave behind, like always.

But this life, it seems,is not just to be lived out here, on this platform of grass, with the large trees behind us, the open valley stretched out before us. We, L and I, have accumulated many different skills in our great and motley careers. If God can use them, then we are so excited.

So we go to a ground floor flat in the school hostel. At this point it is not all clear. Does God ever reveal all His plans at once? Of cause not. We are sad, but happy too. The friends will remain. We are not going far.

Testing testing

It's raining in the Langkloof. The farmers say it came just in time. It has been a long soaking rain. I saw a teacher or two standing out in the school quad, faces and hands turned up, standing still, receiving blessings. I myself absorbed it, that first day, the hem of my jeans soaking it up like blotting paper.

I looked out over the orchards of Twee Riviere and watched the trees, leaves upturned, apples glossy as the water washed over them. The spinach in my garden grew overnight. I had stopped watering my garden in the drought, conserving water. Its incredible, I thought, looking over their green leaves, what water can do.
I still need my garden, we need the food it supplies to us. The rain felt like mercy. Mercy raining down.

Today it rains again - and tests are being written. L and I have been composing tests for weeks, preparing children to write tests, and now finally marking tests. I have been wondering about the whole business, while I march my drama classes up and down to the hall, to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Their little dramas are to be tested too.

My children haven't written many tests in their lives. Homeschoolers don't do much testing. Who needs the pressure? And anyway, I've often thought that it isn't really the best way to learn. There is a secret hidden in it all, I thought, and the rain brought me some kind of answer.

To me this whole life we live seems to be some kind of training ground. We have certainly been tested aplenty. Just this morning I read in the Word

• ' Now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuiness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.'

Tests are necessary for some reason. Thats all I know. My children are bowed down by them, giving up play time to learn, sweating through the writing of them, anxious about their results. Proud when they do well, upset when they do not.

I received a distressed sms from a dear friend. They are being brought to breaking point - but they are not yet broken. They ask for prayer. Help during the testing, help to endure the testing....

I see them, and myself also, like a whole lot of apples. hanging onto those tree branches in the orchards. Hanging on for the rain, stretched to the limit of our endurance sometimes, using up all our resources.

Being tested. Its no good being tired of them, these tests. No good not wanting to participate. There is no choice, they just keep on coming, and we cling on, waiting for the rain. And then it comes, and it is all over, cooling, refreshing, saving.
Mercy.

Until the next time...
.
At the time of writing my father and my sister's only child are both very sick. We heard that a dear nanny is now very ill with THAT virus...
More dreaded tests come upon us.
I ask those of you who practise the presence of God, and who will pray for us to please do so.
Mercy, mercy, all around.

Netjies

Going to school has brought with it many challenges. We have been a home school family, a nomadic, drifting, impermanent family on and off for many years. A family whose dreams included a life lived in tents, under trees, beneath a canopy of blue sky. A life without an iron.

Its not that I cannot iron. Even Lex can (who ever went to Army and never learnt that skill?) Its just that ironing, amongst other things has not been a priority. Mostly.

I guess its part of a much bigger picture - being netjies - generally.

I grew up with a working mother, who cannot cook, and did not do anything of a domestic nature - at all, ever. We had a maid, full time, always, living in the back yard, hardly never there. Looking after myself, when I left home was an adjustment, for years.

I have wrestled with this cleaning thing. For years, during my political struggle, I did not employ anyone ever, to clean up after me. Neither did my friends. I lived with some of the richest, most privileged offspring, and the messiest!

Overseas I was a wife, mother, and servantless for years. I mastered all the domestic arts. I cleaned other peoples houses! I cleaned up in an Irish pub, cleaning upstairs bedrooms after people who had rough nights of.......
It cured me of any sensibilities about cleaning. I came to a revelation - the only way it makes any sense at all is to be paid to do it.

Back home we have had times of abundance when we have employed people , and although good they are always times fraught with care. I am a terrible employer. I cannot help but be a friend. By Gods grace I have been spared users and abusers, because a used and abused employer I would be - I have seen it happen to many of my best friends!

Its distressing though, the lives of the poor and needy , the refugees, the single mothers. Many hours have been spent in my home, over cups of coffee, listening to tales of woe and abandonment. My husband is no better. In better times he was often to be seen delivering furniture and assorted goods to employees in need - once using his boss's Merc sports to ferry our maids daughter to her matric farewell... Life is complicated when one is an employer.

So, mostly as home-schoolers we resorted to the chore system, working our children to get things done! Those days are over. There is a saying - if you want something done, ask a busy person. Its true it seems, as these days we accomplish early risings, cooked breakfasts, all of us rushing out to school, sometimes doing 4 trips back and forth in the afternoon before we are all settled at home once more. Then there is the washing, the ironing, the food to be cooked.

And netjies we are, mostly. But my house is not pristine. In fact, some days it is an absolute mess. I have been known to lie on my bed and stare out my window at the rural scene, when there is work to be done. There are hours I spend under the Syringa tree scribbling when the laundry basket is overflowing onto the grubby bathroom floor. I can be found (like now) punching away on my laptop when I know the floor needs to be swept and there are dishes to be washed.

The point is, I need dream time. House work, they say is a thankless task. I have to agree. There are those who love it, thrive on it. My friends tell me about 'Fly Lady'. I know they want to help, but the only 'Fly Lady' I'll ever be is the one in the kitchen on a very hot day, looking up with an air of hopelessness at the disgusting fly strips, hanging like filthy streamers from the ceiling, knowing that they need to be changed, yet again.

So, the dilemma continues, having never mastered the art of making the domestic worker invisible ( lets live our life as if she does not exist) I constantly turn to them when they are in my home and make asides, about the drama of our life being played out before them. My sister cleans her house the day before her char is due to come. Ho hum, whats the sense of that? But, I totally understand.

So, please forgive the hairballs that always seem to gather beneath my couch (damn dogs! ), the laundry basket that is never empty, the dishes that are hardly ever all packed away. I don't think I'll ever get it right, but in the mean time thanks for all those marvellous books I get to read, flights of fantasy DVDs I get to watch, dreamy dreams I get to dream, and the endless scribblings I get to scribble.
The ironing can wait...

Red hearts and fire

The Langkloof has been burning. We, here in Twee Riviere have been spared the fires this time. Anyway, the mountain is still scorched from the fires last year, when the flames licked at many a back door. I have heard of much suffering and loss, with apple trees ablaze as the fires swooped with the wind and devoured whole orchards.

There was a day when the town was wreathed in smoke. It imitated clouds, showering us with flakes of ash. There has still been no rain, and everywhere the ground is bleached with a brittle dryness. Many mountains have been stripped down to a skin of blackness.

Driving to Kareedouw the other day the grass was, in many places, burnt up to the road, perhaps the fire was caused by a carelessly tossed cigarette. Maybe the same thoughtlessness caused a couple of houses here in town to be ringed by fire. A storehouse was burnt down ( someones home I believe). Looking at it, set me thinking about things lost in the fire.

At the same time as the fires were raging, preparations were being made for a visit from Valentine. One school classroom was filled with imitation red roses and little red hearts. There was a Valentines ball planned for the end of the week. The idea of LOVE was burning. My son was fleeing. He likes a good dance, but did not want to be singed by any flames of passion.

Because passion was, indeed, flaring in many a young heart. Oh how love burns when you are young, maybe fifteen. It sears through you like fire on dry grass. I suspect that there are a few young hearts quite burnt out, because Valentine has come and gone and remained illusive. Wrapped in cellophane, discarded hearts and red roses, are all that remain. I thought I loved someone when I was sixteen. I can still feel the depths of that despair when that holiday was over, and he went back to his city and me to mine... Nothing like it ever since, although I have loved and lost somewhat since, has ever been as bruising.
Oh that tender heart, that offered apple, that burnt down orchard, that sweet sixteen first love.

The flame of love is not easily put out, I thought then, last week, planning a Drama theme for Grade 12, aptly entitled 'Love Hurts.' I read quite a few scripts and all were burning , singed pages of passion. Blanche and Stanley (A Streetcar named Desire), Othello and Desdemona, the desperate characters of Mis.... Burning, burning ...
The seventeen year olds say they understand, wrestling with the scripts, and the deep. searing pain of love. I listen to their lines with an aching heart, while the smoke gathers on the horizon and drops its ash upon us.

L and I were invited to a Valentines meal in Krakeel. The fire had nearly burnt down to their back door a few days before. We had been asked to wear red, and a few lovely ladies were aflame in black and red. We were all a bit older, and surely had all been burnt by love before. We have all lost something in the fire. We toasted Valentine anyway, and tucking in, celebrated LOVE.

The Bible says...these 3 remain, faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is LOVE. God is LOVE. He made us able to love, and to burn with it.

Langkloof Prayers

I am a prayerful person. I have to be. But I am not a peaceful pray- er. My prayers are often desperate, angry and even raging. I rage at God - quite often. I do also have prayers of thanks (what would I do without Him?), happy prayers and quite regularly, chatty prayers. I have been known to talk to God, when alone, whilst sweeping, above the heavy beat of Jimi Hendrix in the background. Then there are those contemplative moments, blissful silence with His presence so real, so marvellous, that I never want to leave...

I have been blessed often by the Twee Riviere womens prayers. Tuesday mornings, chatting and praying, singing (off key) Bible reading. Tea and yummies for afters, sitting in our bellies like comfort, together with our shared prayers.

In my life here I have been prayed for by those who are more charismatic, my eyes flying open, startled sometimes by a particularly empassioned plea, for me, for mine.
I have been prayed for over the phone many times, while I shed tears into the handset, and peace settled apon me. I have received prayer emails, notes and cards. People have prayed for me in broken English, lyrical prose, Afrikaans (like a warm duvet covering..) and languages I don't understand.
Blessings, blessings, all.

But recently I have found myself part of Community prayers, here in Joubertina.
I was invited, because of the CPF to come to the police station for their prayer day. There were the police, all in blue, the new lady Superintendent ( she needs prayer - what a job!) and an assortment of community players. There was the table, set with blue and gold, and two carefully placed, one male, one female, uniform hats of the police.

A candle was lit, a minutes silence for all those fallen police - I focused on the hats.
Some prayers were said, before the singers for the event were ushered in. All in black the men stood before us. Brown, elderly faces, tight curls of grey. Unaccompanied they sang, their hands glasped before them. Workers hands , almost grey in places, gnarled like wood with clean hard nails. The songs were hymns and they stood there and sang, their eyes looking at us, me looking at them.
One old man, as he sang 'He touched me' openly wept, removing his spectacles and wiping his face with a large blue hankerchief. I felt deeply moved then, sparing a moment to wander what his life might have been. His hands alone told a story , of hard work, his lined face, sparse teeth, thin frame. But he sang on, allowing his emotions, unashamedly to spill over. It touched me. He touched me. Then, there was the message, given by a policeman/pastor. He spoke of HOPE and I took it as a word for me, and not only for the belleaguered police station of Joubertina. He quoted Martin Luther King - a lesser known quote - along the lines that 'everything that mattered to me I have lost, except those things which I have put into the hands of Jesus'. There is a new beginning happening in the police in the Langkloof - I really do try to remember them in my prayers.

And then, a few days ago there was a Biduur at the NG Kerk. The whole school was invited to attend. The church was full, we sat in one of the balconies, surrounded on all sides by school children. They squirmed a little as the prayers went on, giggling at times, but mostly very good, little brown heads lowered, ribbed with plaits, huge shiny ribbons, and blonde heads beside them, high ponytailed and freckle cheeked.

There were prayers by a Dominee, an English lady who said a very lyrical prayer, and there were many prayers by farm workers, calling on the Lord for mercy. All of the prayers were for rain. The reason for the prayer meeting was for rain. And there they all were, the farmers, sitting high and dry in the pews, wives beside them, children beside them, all with heads bowed, praying for rain.

Its not often that I have been in such a meeting, when a community comes together, and acknowledges that they are powerless. Powerful people, money, possessions, land, all dependent now, on a force beyond their control. Make it rain. Please make it rain. The fruit is on the trees, not quite ready for harvest, and we need you God - please make it rain.

Personally, I was praying for Pula, in Botswana the word is used for rain and for money. Pula Lord, said I, covering two bases, being pretty skint, and acknowledging the need of the community I find myself in.
We all filed out into the sweltering Langkloof sun, onto the dead, dry, prickly church yard grass.

Its true that most prayers are rather desperate, pleading, asking for rain type prayers. But I did remember to also thank God then, for this Langkloof life. So real , so without pretense.
That was a few days ago. We are awaiting rain.

Kouga Art

There is a lot of Art in the Kouga, we have been told. We have yet to explore the various sites, hidden as they are in Kloofs and cliffs. We have seen some rock art , in the Cedarberg, beautiful big works, in absolutely deserted places, where we stood in awe as a family, and listened to a silence more intense than we had ever experienced before.

I think I had read something about Martin before I met him. He is quite famous in Art circles. Rumours abound about him having lived in a cave, then somewhere in Clarens. I heard from his own mouth that he often uses the same materials that those other artists did long ago, on their stone cave wall canvases. His canvases echo those tones of red, ochre, browns, tans, a startling pink, an electric blue.

Mostly Martin reminded me of a stroller when I first met him. Those ragged, bearded men of the mountain in Cape town, who live outdoors, strolling those upper Cape Town city avenues. I guess he is a little like that, having chosen to buy a piece of land himself in the Kouga mountains, and to live an unplugged life, in the middle of nowhere.

We had a long chat, leaning on a railing outside the ATM one day, after he had walked for six hours into town. He rolled BB cigarettes, and talked about himself. His is a very specifically South African story, spicy and peppered with those names - Big Ben Dekker, Braam Kruger, Bobs Bar... Ja, ja, and our heads nod, remembering army times, the border, passes, train journeys and waiting on platforms for 'bossies' boys to return to a very different South Africa.

There was talk of the Joburg Art scene, many wives, a number of children (an edge of pride when he mentions them still) and THOSE Jesus pictures, touted by Barnard. Your patron, say I, my patron Saint, says he. So why Jesus? I ask nonchalantly, and he looks off into the distance, then fixes me with his ( which one is it?) artists eye and states matter of factly that here, in the Kloof, there is a market for such pictures. Jesus with closed eyes, painted with the pigments of the Khoi found in caves.

We were invited to visit him, in his Kloof. We heard of his boy child, who lived with him there before, and Barnard brought out, wild child that he was, to go to school. Others also told us of this extraordinary child. They spoke of a boy who loves swords, medieaval battles, words and, of cause, art.

We met him one day when we ourselves were childless, and we went in to the Kouga to escape work and our empty house. The boy who met us wore an empty milk carton on his head, with holes for eyes, a trenchcoat, oversized gloves, and spoke with a robotic voice!

In time he shed his disguise and took us for a hike down an overgrown path to wondrous pools set in rock amidst high cliffs and overhung with ferns. We swam in the cool water, but I missed our children as I watched this wild boy, emerging from the water, fully clothed, a knife strapped to his upper arm, like some lost soldier in the jungles of Vietnam.

It was a few weeks later that my children visited. They went in with the Dominee and his family, and slept over without us. They returned exhausted, telling tales of very little sleep, of long swims clambering from pool to pool. They spoke of stick fights and fires burning, of leopard crawls through the bush and exciting, creative games under the trees, mostly imagined up by the boy, leading them on, sharing his world with them.

The children stayed in the Dominees campsite, of caravans and tents, but no doubt vertured into Martins territory. A land of half hearted buildings, of cob and wood. Of kaross spread sleeping places, collapsed trucks and cars.A territory strewn with half completed paintings left to be ruined by the sun and rain. A land where completed works jostle with unruly piles of books, tottering in their own haphazard formations.

When I passed through Martins landscape a stroke of white paint painted my trouser leg. The place has a seam of paint running over it, through it, saturating it. In fact, his entire world there in the Kouga is like one large living installation, to be breathed in, wandered through.

The children saw it all, accepted it and lived quite comfortably within it for a couple of days. Georgia said she wanted to stay. Jethro, with the distance of his age, had not immersed himself as totally. Georgia brought her clothes home in three plastic bags. I opened them for the wash and found them to be caked, soaked, encrusted with sand and mud.
Every item was coloured by earthy pigments, in shades of brown, tan, ochre. The children spoke of electric blue skies , red fires and startling pink sunsets. No doubt those pigments coloured their dreams as they slept for 13 solid hours, back in the cosy comfort of their beds.

Thanks for being there Martin. Here in the uniform land of schools, schedules and timetables you remind me that that territory is there, peacefully painterly and beyond bounderies.

Once in a Blue Moon and Eclipses

It's 2010, and like someone said, it sounds so 'Star Trekkish'. But here we are in the Langkloof, if anything far less 'advanced' than we were a few years ago. We live in a very old peasant house, use gas to cook on, bath by paraffin lamp often and live off an endless supply of marrows and pumpkins from our garden.

We saw the New Year in on the balcony of a smallholding in Krakeel, to the sound of discordant drumming from some friends who had been making merry.
There was a blue moon and an eclipse happening at the same time. Our daughter was valiantly trying to understand and to speak Afrikaans with new friends and Lex and I were looking up and out and wandering where God was taking us this year. We meant to go and listen to Dominee as he preached in the New Year, but weariness and darn right laziness prevented us.

It would have been in the NG Kerk of cause, and in Afrikaans. Which brings me to a very definite factor that we will be contending with this New year - Afrikaans.
Thinking back, I do not know how I ever passed matric Afrikaans. I had no interest in learning, enscanced as I was in my English world. We laughed out loud when we watched 'Nommer Asseblief' - and that was about it.

It seems that me and Afrikaans and that blue moon being eclipsed have a lot in common. Afrikaans crossed my path very occasionally after school, but when it did it was usually part of some of my most intense experiences.

There was that crazy trip in the eighties into the Free State with two 'Alternatiewe Afrikaners' who decided that the very random me ( at that time) needed some 'perspektief'. It was a road trip never forgotten. Times in huge open spaces, big meals around farm tables - with even bigger glasses of brandy and coke!- crazy bakkie rides, even crazier Bloemfontein art students, and a startled me being introduced as someone from ' die Kolonie'.

I remember reading some very beautiful Afrikaans poetry (Yolanda, Yolanda ek vou jou in my hande...) and struggling through Afrikaans literature because I wanted too, and liking the sound of it very much, and feeling disappointed because I knew I was missing something pretty special.

There was that Afrikaans boyfriend who took me backstage during the 'Voelvry' tour to meet a drug saturated Koos Kombuis and Johannes Kerkorrel, and it was all pretty weird and I could hardly understand the big 'Struggle' in those days, never mind that lesser (but pretty serious) 'struggle' of those Afrikaners. They were as high as kites, massively talented, lost and lonely, and I, from my English world, could hardly reach them.

There were my years in Arcadia Port Elizabeth when I learnt to speak very good 'Tsotsi" taal , working with the 'coloured gangs' and sweet little children. Later, living overseas, Afrikaans was useful for gossip, not now of cause, London being so awash with South Africans.

More recently I had heavenly holidays in the Karoo, with Lex's divinely beautiful relative, and I learned to chat one sentence at a time, slipping from English to Afrikaans, and enjoying it.

And now here we are, in the Kloof, trying our best with this lovely language again. Because lovely it is. Oh, ' language of the oppressor' it's been called, but as Zakes Mda points out, it was also the slaves who took Dutch and helped to transform it, mixing in Khoi words and other sounds, helping to bring it to the place where it sprang forth, like it does, from the very soil of this land.

It can be scary, this language, huge fun, and massively expressive, vilely crude too. It is clever, academic, intellectual and as we often say ' there is just no English word for this'.
Thats all I know right now, but I am learning.

I have had stunning conversations on a stoep with a wonderful woman who speaks her language with a voice like a lullaby. It lulls me, lilts and sways. Spoken by her it is a volumptous, big Mama language.

A man in exile, during those years, said once that he needed to return, simply to roll his language round in his mouth. I am trying to do that myself, and finding it tastes good.
Koffie and Beskuit. Melktert. Braaivleis. Boerewors. And so much more.

An English lad, friend of my son, stated the other day that he hates the language, and thinks it stupid. His comment saddened me. It is arrogant and foolish at best, deeply rascist at worst. I guess he is young, and has, as we say, been 'picking up stompies' in a thoughtlessly superior English world.

Sure, its challenging, but here, under my Syringa tree voices carry to me. Some are drunken, some are children. Some are farmers gathering in orchards. Some are singing. All are Afrikaans.

Much more than once in a blue moon then, me and this 'taal' tangle together now, not so eclipsed any more, by my own huge language and culture. A new landscape to explore in 2010.

Knights on Harleys

I stated right from the beginning that I would not be taking part. Riding pillion,that is, on Harley Davidsons. My days of riding on motorbikes are over, having done my time clinging to the backs of an assortment of young men riding an assortment of bikes ....

Harleys, I am told, are different.

There are two wonderful people who live in Twee Riviere who have a clutch of sons (and a daughter in law) who came riding into town, bringing with them a few of these gleaming silver speed machines.
They kindly offered to give all the children in Twee Riviere a spin. It kept them busy for a couple of hours!

We all gathered outside Mannies (the local Portuguese cafe) and they rode up. They were like three Knights, with a cross on a shield emblazoned on the back of their leather waistcoats.They were like Crusaders of old on silver steeds, leather tassles like manes streaming out as they cruised by.
We gathered under a windswept tree and the children took turns. Jethro decided he was not going to ride, being too cool, at fifteen, to clutch onto the back of anyone, whilst all and sundry looked on. But even he could not resist the allure of the Harleys, swopping his bowler hat ( the latest thing) for a 'piss pot' helmet and roaring off, clinging, despite himself. He came back with red stinging eyes, heart racing. I guess that man showed him a thing or two about speed...my mothers heart didn't really want to know.

Georgia wanted only to ride on the red one, and I was glad, eyeing the extra safe helmet that went with that ride, and she too whizzed off, white teeth gleaming. Some of the fathers went as well. One farmer friend was unforgettable, with helmet perched, shorts riding high and gum boots! Lex chose not to, remembering instead his days of cruising boulevards on a Harley, racing motorbikes, and could not bring himself to cling on this time. He stood and admired the sleek machines,talking wheels and spokes and other Harley details.

Some teenage girls rode again and again, my heart beating for them as they arrived back exihilarated each time, emotional even, hugging one other with the pure joy, the bliss of experiencing speed. It brought back a time, long ago when I experienced the Cape Peninsula for the first time, riding on the back of a Kawasaki 1000, swooping through passes and clifftops with the big, wide ,thousand stars sea stretching out alongside us. I spread my arms wide as we sailed though yellow wheatfields, me laughing because it was warm, and my t-shirt was billowing and I felt free. I was young and I felt free.

That's what motorbikes do, isn't it? They do that feeling free thing.
I am afraid now, because I am older, and wiser and I had some close calls on bikes, and even had some wild and free friends who didn't quite make it . But, I keep those thoughts to myself here, outside Mannies, because these Harleys sound like nothing else, don't they?

Standing there, Lex says its like the Wendy House in Joburg on a Saturday night, because all this power and speed is becoming infectious. Cars are coming from everywhere, and as they pass our gathering they are picking up speed, revving even.One young man cruises past in his left hand drive V8, and excelerates as he passes. The same man goes home and brings out his motorbike, nearly popping a wheelie for our excited throng. We are surrounded by sound, speed and power. Its addictive. Even Mannie abandons his till to ride, to ride, to ride.

As true Knights, towards the end the riders bring out bags of sweets and sugar is added to the adrenalin all round . Grins are wide on all faces. Another car, yellow, sporty swings around the corner, wheels spinning and squealing. One Knight, astride his steed, pointed boots on tar says 'Ons het rerig nou Twee Riviere ge - kick start!'
Hey, how cool is that?

Three days in

We have been in school for three days and I felt I wanted to add an addendum to my previous blog.

Lex and I have been surprised, and overjoyed by how well things have gone. Georgia and Jethro are simply loving school, and to be honest we don't really know why. Sure, the teachers are kind and helpful. The school atmosphere is intimate and friendly. But they are also dealing with huge challenges. Georgia hardly understands a word spoken to her ( although the rate with which she is learning is astounding!). They are in a school where the racial divide is almost insurmountable, without being actually rascist, its just that the children come from radically different worlds and there is no middle ground.

Taking all these factors into account we can only thank God that they are striking out and finding their place. We have no illusions that challenges might still come, but these ones are being taken in their stride. Appropriately enough, considering that the school is intensely athletic, and Jethro has quickly become friends with a javelin, high jump and long jump. He has a great sense of humour and entertains us with very funny school stories every day. Georgia has rapidly become pretty popular and can be found at the centre of a giggling group of blond 'boeremeisies' at break.

We are still reeling - how did all this happen - but I am having such fun building a name for myself as a pretty nutty drama teacher that I am glad it did.

Back to School

We have mostly been a home school family. I say mostly because we have also done school. We have been in farm type schools (Greyton- where we were promised 'a childhood to remember', and chose to school in a classroom of 12, three grades, three languages, many races, one teacher), sea side schools (Kalk Bay - where you can see the sea from the classroom windows and the sea breezes whip at the short skirts of the school uniforms, and you meet on the beach to surf, directly after the bell rings).

We have schooled in a little school in a church (seven in a class, Georgia the only girl, where she was better than them all at jay boarding, jungle gym climbing and they were all - except her - on Ritolin!) We have schooled at a private Christian college (where all wore civvies, and assorted body piercings, tattoos (mostly hidden) and dyed hair, lank over one eye.) We have done the cottage school in the sea side suburb, with pentagram graffiti, foul mouthed lounging teenagers.... And inbetween we have homeschooled.

I would like to say we have done it all well. But we haven't. We have done well sometimes, often even, but not always. Homeschooling is like a club, even a sect, sometimes a religion. Those within it know what I mean. Its hard to be in it, hard to get out of it, and very hard to change your own mindset to believe that God is in fact in and out of every and any situation.

There are some homeschoolers like us, who also have gone in and out of school. Some who have never set foot in school (and say they never will!). Some who are depressed, struggling, despairing and yet determined to continue - and others who simply opt out and don't really school at all, at home or in an institution.

I have friends who are awesome homeschoolers, bordering on perfect, they are inspirational, exciting, have exacting academic standards and their children flourish and succeed. I know others who flounder, wander aimlessly, know a lot about a little and a little about a lot.

We have been all of these at times, and when I look at my two children I often feel pretty guilty, certainly never smug (some homeschoolers are smug?), and mostly I have fallen face down on the mercy of God. We have been more nomadic than the Tsuareg, more random than any city teenager, had more wanderlust than the Khoi and San put together and have been just as inconsistent as the Langkloof weather (we are discovering).

And now, in 2010, we find ourselves at the beginning of another season. Yes, you guessed it - institution school again. We are about to enter, yet again ,through the wrought iron gates and (this time) pink walls of a school building, braving the system again, risking life and limb as we pit ourselves against the brainwashing, the sinfulness, the Godlessness supposedly found within those hallowed halls.

I have had these comments and many more said to me at times when we have left the safe havern of homeschooling before, and wandered like so many sheep to the slaughter, into the realms of institutionalized schooling.

Ho hum..... Its not that we do not have these fears ourselves. I have sat up straight in bed in the darkness of the night WORRIED about decisions made. I have never been sure, never known for sure that a decision is a right one.

But Thank You God. At the moment the school is an Afrikaans one - in a farming community, a conservative one, 300 children - where the white boere children now go to school with the children of the labourers. They rub each other raw sometimes, but still manage to be rated 12th best school in the Eastern Cape. I have anxiety about it all, even though it seems we are being pioneers, English speakers, 'inkomers' who are getting special treatment, english text books and exams, because, as it goes -'the times they are a changing'.
And anyway Lex and I will be teaching Drama and Computers to Grade 10,11 and 12.

How all that happened can only be a God thing and you will have to trust me on that, without getting all the details. In to it all we jump, like we do very often into the Kouga these days, to escape the blistering heat. And the water flows on, and takes its twists and turns and goes where it wills.Us, in God are like that, seems to me.

Its all about trust, at the end of the day, and not about the details. The children are strangely excited - Georgia begged to be allowed to go. Jethro simply wants to get his matric. It all takes faith, in or out, in my experience.

But I like this river, and swimming in it. Maybe there are some rapids round the corner, some high cliffs. Maybe a sandy cove, a sheltered beach of white pebbles to rest in and soak up the sun. We'll see, we'll see....

Ode to a Capuccino

Capuccinos are what we miss most. About Cape Town.

No one serves a capuccino in Joubertina. There is only really one restaurant here anyway - a smashing burger,yes, the best slap chips ever and a darn good coffee - but no capuccino.

In Kareedouw there are capuccinos to be found - but they are really coffees with froth on top (I have high standards I'm afraid!). And Kareedouw is a sort of neither here nor there place, although we are very fond of the restaurant and the 'from somewhere else' owner. And so Lex and I found ourselves travelling a good hour to Jeffreys Bay in search of THAT capuccino.

We found it in a fab restaurant, with a wrap around stoep and a chef (who worked with Jamie and holds to his 'keep it simple , happy" philosophy). The menu looks stunning- sushi, mezze - drool! But on our (very) limited budget we stuck to a couple of capuccinos.

And they were enough.

They arrived complete with a white frothy leaf pattern on top. I was hopeful. I dipped my lip in, and sipped. Yes. Its been months since we had one of these!

And then we started chatting - Lex and me. And while we chatted my eyes moved, from the Australian couple, her Chinese and beautiful, who were talking about primates and clams and he was older and smitten...

And then we paused to eavesdrop on the hostess chatting about her trip to Thailand and visits to forests and temples and.....I watched the man clip the hedge wearing his 'I love Jesus hat'...

And all the while we sipped and chatted. Immediately we wanted to stay for hours - we noted it was a wireless hotspot. We felt inspired. We wanted to open our laptop and start working out scripts. Ideas abounded and hope floated like the smells of food and coffee around us.

It was then we realized that it was not really only the capuccinos we miss so much. It's that certain kind of restaurant. The ones where you can sit and work, and eat sushi. Where there is a bakery and fresh breads and pies and croissants and platters of olives,cheeses and meats. A place with friendly waitrons in extra long aprons, well trained and accented - young and American, Spanish, English - seeing the world.

I miss being anonymous. I miss just catching the tail ends of the conversations of other people, reading into smiles the characters, the details of their lives. Imagining. And somehow being there just gets me and Lex going. A whole lot of things - dreams - suddenly seem possible again.

So, we have to do it more. Get out. I saw in the leafy cloud floating on top of my capuccino a whole lot of dreamy dreams.We have made a date with ourselves to do it more often - maybe once a month.

To find that part of ourselves that wakes up when we sip a real capuccino.

Molen Rivier

I am , actually, a Langkloofer. My family, the Tautes, come from the Langkloof, having been granted Molen Rivier in the 1700's. My grandfather was born there, and my father told me many stories, when I was growing up, of him spending time under the old homesteads yellow wood ceilings in the 1950's when he working for a canning company ,and was well known in the Kloof as 'die Engelsman' that came in and bought fruit.

There are stories of a branch of the family who suffered from haemophilia and so there was a single spinster (she never married through fear of carrying the bleeder gene) called Babette who lived for many years in the old homestead in Molen Rivier.

My father has asked me many times if I have visited the homestead, and up to last week I had not, but had swished past on my way down the R62. Not much is visible from the road, but I had glimpsed a few whitewashed buildings beyond a grove of trees, an overgrown river and a church.

It was an extremely hot day, and we were on our way to an even hotter Oudshoorn when Lex and I decided to drive in and explore. I have two wonderful old photographs of my ancestors taken at Molen River. One shows a group of rather attractive ladies, mostly dressed in black, gathered in front of a window. I have always liked it, the women seeming rather less severe than most, in old pictures of a hundred years ago. Some look at the camera and some away, but they are relaxed, informal.
My favourite photograph, however, is the other one, showing a group of happy picnickers, down on the river banks, most dressed in white, some with palm fronds and bulrush leaves ringed round their straw hats. Some faces are blurred ( I guess they moved) others half smile into the lens. The subjects lean against each other, languishing in the shade of what was probably a very hot day. As a child I fancied I was one of them, a young girl, tendrils of hair escaping a large loose ribbon, a straw hat tossed back around my neck.

So, as we turned off onto the gravel I gazed down to the left, through the grove of cool trees to the river, fancying for a moment, I glimpsed them all there.

Before I left Cape Town I read a wonderful book in the rather special bookclub I used to belong to there. It was 'The Beadle" by Pauline Smith. I had somehow managed to get to this ripe old age without reading this South African classic, but I, together with many other ladies in the bookclub, adored it. When I arrived in the Langkloof I visited the Book Exchange ( what a lifesaver - the Joubertina Library is a sad affair!) and there, on a shelf, was a copy of 'The Beadle', which I promptly bought and re read.

When I next visited my parents they handed to me all the Taute family papers, seeing as I had, as it were, returned to my roots. They make very fascinating reading, as does the section in a book about the Langkloof written recently. However, the most glorious aspect of all this, in my opinion, was the information contained in a little yellowed newspaper article . In it was the wonderful fact that Pauline Smith had, in fact, written 'The Beadle' whilst staying for a few months at the Taute homestead in Molen Rivier.

Now I know that the setting for the book is the Karoo, but as I wondered around the little church and graveyard in Molen Rivier, I beleived that this was the churchyard Pauline Smith had gazed upon, when she wrote the book. Be that as it may, the graves were sad and unattended, just about all Tautes, and I stood and gazed upon them for a long while, and Lex wondered aloud if they had all been tall! Apparently yes, I have always been told that we have the genes of giants!

We eventually found the old homestead, but I had expected to find it unoccupied, having heard that Babette had died, and all the wonderful 18th century furniture had been auctioned off. Lex said, hopefully, that perhaps we could put in a land claim, seeing as how, it would appear, there are no more Tautes in the Kloof, except, that is, me! The house was, however, obviously occupied, with a mown lawn, some washing flapping on the line, and a gardener eyeing us over his spade.

I proudly announced that I was in fact a 'Taute,' and that I would like to walk around the old homestead. He informed us that the 'Meneer is daar bo by die stoor'. ( the owner is in the barn) - and so we set off to meet him.

We found the barn, rather empty, with one lonely man sitting tying up bunches of dried flowers. He looked like a labourer, and we could hear rather loud shouting coming from within. I sent Lex forward to ask about the 'Meneer' - thinking that maybe we had caught him at a bad time, shouting at his labour force!

Lex speaks perfect Afrikaans and as the 'boere' (farmers) here are traditionally conservative (read rascist) we thought we would tread carefully. I was determined to see the homestead. Lex walked ahead, me a few steps behind, into the barn, asking the man if we could see 'die meneer." At this, up stood the man, tilting back his red cap, and told us that he was, in fact, the owner!

It was at about the same moment that I realized that the 'shouting' was in fact loud reading from the Koran! Interesting.

He was very friendly and invited us to immediately return to the house, walk around as much as we liked, and to even step inside if we so wished. He assured us that Sanna, the domestic worker, would show us around.

We returned to the homestead, rather embarassed, but still determined to do the tour. The building has National Monument status, and so is completely unaltered. It is a little forlorn, and I looked for sign of Babettes award winning roses, but there were none, although the garden was neat and tidy. There were a few old men leaning on rakes and spades, watching us from the shade. I did wander what they were thinking when I cheerily introduced myself as 'family of Babette" and they nodded and smiled.

Lex thought we shouldn't go inside, but I wanted too, announcing that my Grandfather had been born in one of these rooms, and so on. The interior was dim and just about completely bare. The lovely wide yellow wood floors still gleamed. the low ceiling was still made from the solid yellowood beams, the windows still set deep in the thick walls, with broad wooden windowledges. All the fixtures and fittings are all still there. But, the walls were bare, except for endless Koranic scripture, some laminated, some framed, hung around on every wall. In amongst them was a photo of a lady, shrouded in black against the backdrop of Mecca.

We left, walking across the long dry lawn in silence. I suppose I felt the same way I always feel when I visit the famous homes (museums) of Shakespeare, Austen, the Brontes. Disappointed. I wanted, of cause, to find them all still there, the ladies of the photograph, or the picnic children. Maybe to glimpse my grandfather, young, jodhpurred, hitting his riding crop against muddy boots.... Even my own father, in his twenties, tall and dark haired, dressing for dinner, in the style of the 50's, with a cravat, a tweed jacket...

There were, naturally, none of them there, but it was worse than that. Every memory was erased, and I felt no hope of ever finding even a shadow of the past.
We were even more silent as we drove away. Stunned, to be honest, even disorientated.
After a while, we left the gravel again, turning back onto the tar, and drove away.
"Oh well," said Lex," there goes our land claim!" and then, I laughed.

Happy New Year!

Purple Aliens

The Jacarandas in the Langkloof are blooming. Their Gentian Violet heads are visible from a distance, glowing amongst the various greens of the other trees. They lay their blossoms down in a carpet of purple around their feet. My husband remembers Pretoria, and when we drive over them they pop and he recalls his childhood.

We have a Syringa tree in front of our house. It is our outside room. Recently it was laden with berries, light lilac buds and green leaves. The buds held a most heady fragrance, especially released at night, and I often sat beneath it in the dark, and drank that sweet aroma in. But they don't belong here actually - like we don't. We are called 'inkomers'.

There are many of us, and Lex and I are getting to know this group that we - by force of circumstance - belong to. Firstly, there are the motley crew in Twee Riviere: The family up at Bethany, the seven singing children, bringing the cows in. The large, hearty Dad with a voice like an arch angel with sandy hands - forever in shorts - conceding to add army boots in the cold. The blonde, willowy Mom, dreaming up prose whilst stooped over steaming pots of berries, apricots, peaches...

Then there is the other family, with six children, all of various skin tones, who live together in a jolly yellow house. Their sweet faces appear from bushes, peek out from between floral curtains, skipping and jumping like their happy goats when I arrive to visit.

There are the two 'bushbillies' who emerge smiling from their low wooden house like two Tolkien characters, bearded and long haired, in the winter cloaked and hooded. They live in a wooded clearing and their home inside is fragrant with herbal essences, ground coffee and spices. The wooden walls are lime washed, cosy, the light dappled and at night lanterns and candles glow.

A family with five children moved into Twee Riviere years ago, and now live in a house made of river rocks. They are a group, tousled haired and blonde, carrying chickens, large bunches of vegetables from their garden, or a baby on their hip when they greet you.

There are others who I know not so well, but are here, adding their shades of colour to the landscape. The artist who lives in Krakeel, with long, flowing greying hair, long dresses with gold brocade. She shares deep painterly thoughts whenever I meet her, often shrouded in smoke and also smiling.

Everyone knows the other artist, well known in art circles, now living deep in the Kouga. He paints Jesus with chalks and pigments taken from Khoi sites. He walks into town, like an old hobo, to share insights and have conversations about a past life surrounded by other artists and writers and South African characters now quite famous.

There is also the 'inkomer' Dominee and his wife and children who extend their home and hands in particular to outsiders, allowing themselves to be agents of change. They are a lighthouse to many, helping us to navigate  rough seas as we adapt to life here.

I have met other 'inkomers' too - from other parts of Africa. The Malawians are here, sought after for their labour, they are cheerful, hardworking and friendly. In town a Somalian woman sits cross legged and shrouded on a carpet of bags, bandannas, cheap underwear and headgear. 

In Joubertina there is a house just like Karen Blixens in 'Out of Africa'. Two other 'inkomers' live there. He is a true African, like a great white hunter, gravel voiced and leather hatted. She small and Dutch, trailing a little blonde child from one hand. We talk with them over black coffee, surrounded by cigarette smoke and they share their enthusiasms - the environment, the mountains, photography, art.

It is she who tells me about the wild orchids. Her eyes light up as she talks , first about the wonderful fynbos, and then, about the orchids, lying, contained in their bulbs beneath the soil, and then pushing up and revealing themselves in their abundant variety. Those who belong here are, of course, very beautiful.

But here now is my Syringa tree and over there I see two round Jacaranda heads. Next door are two oak trees that I adore, behind their stone wall. They don't belong here either.

More and more outsiders are coming - strangers fleeing the city, flying in on the wind like so many seeds, to find a better life. We are not always received with openness and friendship, but we are here to stay, and in the meantime , Langkloofers, why not enjoy the variety and colour that we bring.

 ....for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; .... Matthew 25:35

For the many in this beautiful Kloof that have blessed us so abundantly, Thank You. We are so looking forward to 2010. We are so grateful to be here, what a gift!
Have a Blessed Christmas!

Two Worlds

It is raining when we arrive . We pull up outside their house in Joubertina. Desmond and Garrie are gracious and friendly, inviting us in, out the rain.

We come at the invitation of Barnard, the dominee and his wife, Este. Lex and I have been reading Desmonds' letters from Krakeel, written in the early two thousands. They are written in Afrikaans, but even me, with my rather poor Afrikaans have appreciated the brilliance of the writing. Lex has explained subtle nuances, innuendos and word play that I otherwise might have missed.

We pause in the entrance room with Des. He is older now, a little shaky - and he fixes us beneath his gaze, with one particularly bright eye sparkling at us - we stand there and chat. We are surrounded by paintings, beautiful furniture, and soft carpets underfoot.

Garrie calls us in his soft Portuguese accented Afrikaans to join the party. We find them all in a busy kitchen and soon move through to another room, pink Camparis held high.

Here we settle and glancing round I take in a little of the art and artifacts that surround us. Garrie guides Desmond to a chair and he joins us, his conversation still bright, the twinkle in his eye winking at me. I feel totally somewhere else, here, under the high thatch, enclosed in other places. The world of Desmonds' travels and successes.

At table Garrie pads back and forth to the kitchen on bare feet, their two 'woefies' twirling round his feet like two large make-up brushes. The crystal glasses are heavy in my hand. The pink Camparis are followed by heady rose, the rose by vials of dry white wine that lingers on my tongue. We talk through mouthfuls of pancake mushroom starters, more pink in the maincourse ( what is it - delicious!). And end with berries and mousse ...

Through it all Garrie tenderly tends to Desmond, who shares of his life. On his other side is Este, Nordic, blonde Viking, beautifully assisting, bearing platters aloft. Sitting down she places a gentle hand on Desmonds arm. Desmond tells of the world of Peter Stuyvesant, and the Ruperts. And I think that he has surely lived his own byline - 'So much more to enjoy'.
And here we are, doing just that - in Joubertina.

By the time the coffee comes we have touched on all of them - the Strydoms of Krakeel (meaning Quarrel - like the sound of the waters that used to busily run through it). Desmond knows them all , is one. And here they have settled, back in the Langkloof. And those Langkloof tales, the Kritzingers, the Ferreiras, the Oliviers, are too many to tell, and they mix here, under the thatch with images of Europe, the Americas, Egypt...

The wine has mixed it all up and in the end we are fingering pottery Picasso-esque Portuguese figures, as Garrie dreams of them both one day living in Portugal. But thats not happening now, as he tends to a now tired Desmond, and I hear about little snippets of my own ancestors, the Tautes, also from the Langkloof.

In a sense we have something in common then, me also returning - feeling at home here from the big wide world. The 'woefies' do their swirl dance around us when we leave. Desmond braves the cold for us - it has stopped raining - and anyway he says it does not rain in the Kloof like it used to.

I have promised Garrie a pot of Basil - we spoke of Salad Caprese - and I heard them both invite us again. I want to go back.
To step off the Joubertina street and back under that cool high roof.
So many stories still to be told, by Des the once politician ( historically a Smuts man - and yes, he has the beard too) who once lost to the ANC by three votes. So, beloved by the people here also, obviously. The man who has known many a Dominee, many slain by his pen, others (especially Barnard) - encouraged.

I wish I knew them all - the characters that march through the pages of his writing - that spring to life. But I also have a sense now of a measure of suffering, maybe harsh words not only from him but towards him - mostly about his orientatation. His love.
A courageous man, living a life, then and now on his own terms - another extraordinary Langkloofer. How many more are out there?