On Monday evening we stayed at Klipkolk Guest House in Northern Cape's Mier area, near the Rietfontein border into Namibia. Our hosts, Hendrik and Getruide Bot run a lovely establishment in an old farmhouse. Hot water in the kitchen came from a "donkey"; geese and peacocks roamed the raked gravel yard and we all moved outside to watch day turn to night. It was an evening reminiscent of my Karoo childhood.
Hendrik is a typical go-getting, middle-class businessman. Irritated by bureaucracy he complained about intransigent government departments who don't pay their bills on time. The three groups of guests all joined him and Getruide around a family table for dinner, joining hands to say grace before the meal was served. There was far too much lovely food - three different meats (including tripe!), vegetables cooked with sugar and cinnamon and roosterkoek. A classic Afrikaner dinner.
The other guests were people whose family had lived in the area for many years before they had moved to Windhoek. Still speaking Afrikaans, they were on a trip down memory lane to see Granny's grave, the old church and farmhouse. And they had found far more information than they expected, a welcoming community and an extraordinary sense of being home.
What no-one discussed, however, was the quintessentially South African dynamic. Hendrik and Getruide are members of the Mier community, people who under apartheid had been dispossessed of their land. After 1994, and helped by a Land Claim settlement in 2002, the Mier community have become the major landowners of the area again. The returning visitors are descendants of the white farmers who had owned the area, and controlled the politics, during most of the 1900's.
But when we sat down to dinner it was obvious that those racial issues of the past did not matter. Values and standards had not changed. The challenges of living in one of the most desolate, forsaken areas of this country remain. And the hospitable natures of the people is unwavering.
I went to bed feeling really good about the road we are travelling.
Originally started the project to improve my photography skills. Over a 2500 photos later it's become a personal diary. I post pictures that mark my...
