Voortrekkers, Voorlaaiers en Voorname

Well I’m still enthralled by the whole concept of those Boers pioneering their way across the countryside. Life must have been so cool for the men but a bitch for the women.

The men sat around polishing their voorlaaiers, no one nagged them to take a bath, and if they wanted more than one wife, well who’s to stop them. All you needed was a decent beard, a horse, a kraal and you were made. They’d disappear for a few days on hunting trips, pockets bulging with biltong, and all the game to pick and choose from right under their noses.

Women on the other hand had it tougher. For starters, you needed to find a man to marry by the age of 14 otherwise you were considered an old maid with droopy tits. You spent your days rubbing cow shit on the floor, stuffing straw into mattresses, searching for termite mounds to break open to bake bread from the dough you’d been kneading since 4 in the morning, and then sew bits of leather together with a blunt needle to make trousers for your hairy husband.

Then the day would arrive, after your husband had consulted the Bible and found the message that it was time to trek north. You’d have to pack up your 13 children, Ouma, Oom Sarel, who slept in the wagon outside, your 2 cooking pots, a bucket of candle wax, sacks of biltong, rusks, konfyt, buchu and a clean bonnet.

The oxen would get ingespan and the slow trek would begin. Dangerous mountains were tackled by dissembling the whole wagon and carrying it over piece by piece and Willamiena Petrulella Susara dared not utter a “you want me to carry what?” At night Cornelius Paulus Gerhardus Steffanus Jocobus Ignesius Martinus Christoffel Lodvikus Hermanus Albertus Johannus and the other 12 children would gather around to listen to awe inspiring stories read from the Bible.

It must have been cool coming over a koppie, seeing a river running through a valley filled with bokkies and blommetjies and being able to say “vrou, dis nou ons plek”.

Life was hard, but they were uncomplaining free spirits on the African plains which is more than we can say in today’s lifestyle of washing machines, tarred roads, supermarkets together with hydrogen bombs, a damaged ozone layer, insurance premiums and a government who owns you.