THIS TOWN, IS COMING LIKE A GHOST TOWN

THIS TOWN, IS COMING LIKE A GHOST TOWN

All the clubs have closed down.  The pottery club, the photographic club and the sports club are just some of the deserted buildings but Kleinzee is special and I’ve fallen in love with the town.  It’s made up of about 30 or so different types of characters in a ghost town setting.  There used to be about 4 000 or so employees working for De Beers diamond mines but now that they are no longer mining here, the remaining people are finishing things off and there’s big talk of a boom happening in January when De Beers sells off all the vacant houses.  The die hards are patiently waiting as they have been for the last few years.

Simon has already become my favourite customer at the Crazy Crayfish.  He usually blows in to the diner barefoot and in his pyjamas and we discuss important issues about humanity which I never seem to be able to remember much of the next morning.  It could be my brain is so full of information which I’ve been accumulating these last few months or it could be due to Jugermeister which I’ve come to enjoy and which no longer tastes like Vicks Acta Plus.  He often brings his Jack Russel along but when the family of Cape Foxes come around and creep right up to the door for scraps, the dog gets too excited and Simon takes him home.  I’m holding thumbs there’s a litter of Fox pups safely stashed away in a hole somewhere.  Brown Hyenas (Strand Wolfe) roam around here as well but they comb the beach front and the golf course for food.  We nearly bumped right into a little Steenbokkie late one night walking back from the diner.  The poor thing left skid marks in the dust as it dashed round the corner barely a foot away from us.  I got such a skrik I nearly left my own skid marks.     

Miskiet, a Crazy Crayfish regular, has a busy life hunting game on a neighbouring farm or diving for crayfish and fishing and driving his 4x4 to isolated beach front spots or fitting his beach buggie with a moerse V8 or some or other turbo charged engine or buying rounds of Jugermeister. 

Kai is also a regular.  He is Finish and is the local baker. He makes a Pantoffel loaf which is a strange baguette hollowed out in the shape of a stokie slipper and which I think is as odd as his sense of humour. 

Que has a oyster farm which seems to do very well and he has the concession to harvest seaweed which he exports.  He is always rushing around everywhere.  He’s given me some dried seaweed to make jelly which I’m dying to try out.  Mmmm perhaps Tequila shooters.    

Yesterday we explored the surrounding area and met Rocky, Karen and Timo, arty surfers who live on a piece of farm ground on the beach front.  They have the most awesome view of their own private beachfront in a remote setting. Karen & Rocky sailed the world in their yacht for eight years but now it’s moored in Cape Town and they make their living by mining the shoreline for diamonds and ride the waves in their spare time.  They have to wait for the sea to be just right to be able to get their mining pipe down among the rocks so they have loads of free time to catch a wave. 

We visited Noup which is about 40 km out of town and is a remote cluster of authentically restored old diamond divers cottages in a beautiful setting.  Perfect for romantic getaways and when its crayfish season the place is fully booked according to Dudley, the owner.  He liked Theo’s XT Thumper and I liked all his pebbles.  As we stood chatting about the guided 4 x 4 shipwreck tours which he offers, he harry casually scratched around in the pebbles and picked up a tiny fossilized mussel, a petrified piece of wood, a fossilized piece of elephant enamel, and a fossilized fish ear bone.  He blew my mind when he told me they were all 80 million years old.  Wow, to be able to touch something that lived on the earth that long ago is just wow.  Big time wow.  He’s a geologist and has offered to ID my stone collection. Cool, I’ll be back and I’d love to see his prehistoric megalodon sharks teeth which he collected from Hondeklip bay, not too far from here.  That’s what I love about this place, it’s untouched, undiscovered and uninhabited.  Well except for the areas which De Beers have mutilated.  But still, it feels like I’m in virgin country recently pioneered by diamond diggers.

I’ve met a few of the more traditional west coast locals who live here in Kleinzee and they all live up to their name of being friendly. I love the Namakwaland style of putting words together and it has become apparent to me that I’m gonna be doing a lot of kuiering here in Kleinzee and less soul searching.  Finding the meaning of life is hard work with a construction team doing renovations inside your head so I’m up for a bit of partying. Oh hell, life here on the wild front is tough.  

Moerse – very big

skrik  - fright

Miskiet - Misquito

kuiering – party sessions