Black Magic Woman

Black Magic Woman

We have moved around 3 times since coming to Qolora village.  Initially, we stayed for about 5 days at the first place which was at the awesome open field/braai spots but there wasn’t any water there (well ok there was a river mouth within walking distance) but we were a bit far from the village and we weren’t really getting to meet the locals by living on the outskirts of town.   Except one night when we got a bit spooked by three Xhosa women who could have put a spell on me.  Picture this, dusk settled over the deserted valley.  The wind pumped at a hectic speed strong enough to blow dogs down the hillside and even the cows hooked their horns into the bushes to keep from lifting off the ground and flying off.  We stayed inside while the caravan rocked and swayed.  Then we heard a faint drumming coming from across the river.  Earlier that day we had seen 3 Xhosa ladies dressed to the nines in their traditional outfits, the one woman was kitted out in a crisp white wrap around dress with a matching turban like headgear wrapped a half a meter above her head.  They spent a few hours across the field from where we were camped and I was dying to know what they were up to.  They walked around waving their arms in the air, shaking their sticks at invisible things and seemed to be anointing spirits in the way a priest performing an exorcist does in those PG18 movies when some poor child raised by obsessively religious parents living in a wooden double storey house with long creaky passages needs to be saved from evil demons who take over the child’s body and write coded messages across her stomach and spin her head around 360 degrees before making her vomit green stuff 6 metres across the room. But I digress.  These women blowing around on the field, flaying their arms and chanting, reminded me of something ominous is all I mean.  Then later when the sun slipped behind the hill, the women disappeared and that’s when the drumming started.  It beat rhythmically throughout the whole night while we lay there wondering whether there were people with sticks through their noses dancing around a big black pot suspended over a fire  and if so what was inside the pot?  Then we wondered how far away from us this scene was taking place.  It was pitch dark outside, and the howling wind and the beating drums were our only company in the dead of the night.  At 3am I eventually must have dozed off, deciding that if anyone wanted to cut out my kidneys for a ritual sacrifice there was nothing I could do about it.  The next morning we awoke and the landscape was still the same.  The wind had died and birds sang their morning song in the bushes, although how they managed to still have feathers and not look like pink crinkly naked newborn chicks after that wind sure beats me. Much to my relief, no dead goats’ heads dotted the field and no evil spirits evoked by the Xhosa women had entered my body through my nostrils while I slept.  We did find out a few days later that the women were indeed traditional healers but the night time drumming remained a mystery to us.          

Soon after, we moved from the field to a stunning little enclosure under lush vegetation behind one of the white peoples’ holiday houses.  There are about 20 such houses here, probably of which 5 are permanent residents. Anyway we loved our little Jamaican campsite under the palm trees, 5 meters from a quiet, pristine beach where Theo started catching fish more regularly and which tasted awesome.  Problem there was once again no water but we also were still not part of the village yet.  My idea of having the children visit me to help them with homework and practise their English would probably not likely happen if were settled in the “white” part of town.  We had asked the chief if we could move into the rondavels which we spotted when we first arrived in town but in Africa things happen at their own pace and we were still waiting for their response.  Eventually, after another meeting with the sub chief (the big chief had died the week before we arrived so that also left the villages with more important decisions to make than finding a home for us) we were given the go-ahead.  We could move into a rondavel and have free electricity in exchange for teaching at the school.  I was happy to pack up and move again, having just gotten my strength back after being down for 9 days with tick bite fever. It was my 3^rd time in 3 years and someone had told me that if I pushed through without antibiotics my body would fight it off for good.  I bravely sweated out a continuous headache, aching body and insides that felt like perhaps those women on the hill had removed my kidneys when I wasn’t looking.  You do think of strange things in the middle of the night when you become a bit delirious after 9 consecutive restless nights.       

So finally it was off to the rondavels which offered loads of potential in the way of getting involved in helping the villagers.  We spent two days moving into our wonderful hut with cow dung floors, grass roof and tiny windows overlooking the village on the one side and more open fields on the other.  The water pipe has burst but eventually we will get water but we have electricity, cellphone reception, some furniture and we are in the heart of things.  This is home.

We don’t need no education

We don’t need no education




Our first day, teaching about 30 children from grade R to grade 3 was a day I will never forget. We arrived at Qolora Primary and Secondary School at 12 noon, all spruced up and excited although somewhat apprehensive about the learners’ ability since we had no idea what level of English to expect from them and on top of that we had 4 different grades in one class. Maria, the principal, welcomed us and showed us to what I would assume was their hall where we were to teach. The room was in need of a paint and had no furniture (other than a few rolls of rusty barb wire stored in the corner, no blackboard or electricity. Then the door opened and the children raced in, rushing to get to the front and after squashing up on the floor 2 foot from us, their eager little faces gazing up at us, we introduced ourselves and our first English lesson began. We had each child tell us their name and then our lesson plan was to teach them about animals. We held up flash cards of animals which we had printed the previous afternoon at the construction site office, (remember I mentioned in my previous blog that they were doing road works) anyway unfortunately it wasn’t in colour but none the less, they were A4 size and worked fine. We asked them questions about the animals to access their English and then proceeded to teach them to sing Old Mac Donald Had A Farm. To say they loved it is putting it mildly. They shouted the Yee Ha Yee Ha Ho at the top of their lungs and the whole building vibrated as about 30 enthusiastic children did the ducks’ quack quack sound. Theo and I were grinning from ear to ear. Maria and another teacher who joined the class were singing along just as excitedly as us. Maria had been a great help keeping order from the beginning and getting them to co-operate in the beginning by translating our requests into Xhosa. Theo and I floated out the school grounds afterwards. We heard a Yee Ha Yee Ha Ho, following us from behind a classroom wall and a shy little quack quack from someone standing in front of the long drop toilets along the fence line. We grinned all the way home. We were teachers. Unpaid but so what, we had taught a class and it was a success.

The next day we were swamped with little people, all shouting their favourite line Yee Ha Yee Ha Ho and all pushing to get a place to walk next to us or to try and touch our hands as we entered the school gates. What a welcome and no other reward or payment necessary. We started the lesson by doing 10 minutes of the song, which of course they loved. We struggled a bit to keep order that day, as Maria was not there to help control them. She and a few other teachers had gone somewhere to some meeting. The children got too noisy and before the lesson was over 2 boys were crying from being pushed and shoved by the other kids. We did body parts which they were good at, then we put them in a big circle and played Simon Says and although they didn’t quite understand the game, we all had fun.

After class, we walked around the school to get a feel for the place. They have a nice big veggie garden, tended by 2 Xhosa women who also cook lunch for all the learners. They grow sweet potatoes, cabbage, and spinach which they cook daily with either sugar beans or pap in a big potjie on a fire. I wondered if that was the only meal some of the children had for the day. Maria is very proud of her school and her students. They mostly all wear neat school uniforms and we found out that they do have electricity and a photo copy machine (which is at someone’s house for some reason) and we were told that they do have a computer. There are 8 classrooms with 8 teachers I think, we haven’t met everyone yet and about 200 students from grade R to grade 9.

Tomorrow we have Grade 4 to 7. I’m really looking forward to it but now it time to work on a lesson plan.

GOT TO HAVE KAYA NOW

GOT TO HAVE KAYA NOW


Bubbling with excitement we hit the N2 and headed up towards Butterworth where we planned to turn towards the coast through Cantani and then explore a couple of villages which were nestled in the hills close to the sea, all as per John’s helpful directions. We reached the busting town of Butterworth about 100km’s later that day, we measure our days in distance not time, since we are not directed by time but rather by how much diesel we need to pump into our fuel guzzling truck. 5km’s to the litre isn’t bad but when you’ve clocked 1300 km’s and more to go with no bank account to continually replenish the trucks addiction to fuel, then every km counts. It was Saturday and everyone from far and wide was their doing their shopping at Shoprite, Lewis or Pep Stores. 50km’s further we arrived at Cantani and everyone who wasn’t in Butterworth was doing their shopping there. The main road was lined with little shack shops where people could buy mieliepap, get a haircut, buy airtime or chickens. We made a mental note that we could definitely stock up on vitals in Cantani since it would probably be the nearest town from us and there was a grocery shop. Taxi’s weaved across the roads, loaded with people and their heavy 50kg bags of pap and sugar. We grinned. It felt good. This was rural and we loved it. Viva Africa. I was relieved to see that the younger women in the villages and towns were wearing jeans and T-shirts. I had been a bit concerned that women were expected to dress conservatively and not wear shorts or long pants but only dresses or skirts as stipulated by the elders and I didn’t own a single such feminine article of clothing. We got directions for a place called Ngobla or Ngura or Ngani or something like that. Anyway it was a name which we clearly had trouble with cos when we hung out the truck window clicking away with our tongues, asking for directions, no-one seemed to know where we were headed. Eventually after getting cheek tied, we were told to follow a gravel road which looked more like a dirt track than anything else and we hoped it led somewhere. The road was as pock marked with embedded stones as a hormonal teenagers’ pimply face. We rattled on for about 30 km’s over hills and dales, passing goats, cows, the odd person and clusters of colourful homes, some were mud rondavels, others were hexagon shaped brick houses and many were painted bright blue or green. The Xhosa women which we saw had painted white circles around there eyes and coloured in cheeks and I assumed it must mean something but I wasn’t sure quite what. It definitely did not indicate a bride to be as these big mammas did not conjure up pictures of virginal youth as they surveyed us through a cloud of billowing dust left by the truck. I waved but they didn’t seem too enthusiastic to wave back. Tatomkhulu’s neatly dressed in their Sunday best, their crinkled faces tucked under their weather beaten hats didn’t hide their questioning eyes as we rattled past them down the bumpy narrow road. Here and there we saw children playing or working in vegetable gardens in front of houses which were closer to the roadside. They stopped to stare from big blank eyes concealing their thoughts as we passed.

We arrived at the Kei river mouth and decided to stay right there for a day or two while Theo tried to catch a fish. Palm trees grew up to the beach front which was abundant with 100’s of oyster shells the size of rocks big enough to knock a tent peg into the ground. Across the water we could see a hill, sprinkled with white peoples’ holiday houses and a resort, all nestled in pockets of sub tropical forest. This side, a few Xhosa people stood around, laughing and jabbering loudly, waiting for the pontoon to carry them across the river. They were still returning from their days’ shopping it seemed and had a lot of exciting things to discuss. Some were on foot and others squeezed into their bakkies together with their groceries, babies, children and a bunch more people in the back. A couple of holiday makers from EL in their 4 x 4’s crossed the river and a few local Xhosa mammas, selling beads and beautifully woven baskets, comfortably sitting flat on their bums, legs spread out straight in front of them, feet neatly pointing upwards, in that customary way which seems to come naturally for them but which I, as a white person, just can’t do, well not without some kind of back support.

Monday morning we left the waterside and headed up the hill to explore the next village. The truck struggled up the hill, and much to my dismay, didn’t make it to the top. We panicked for a minute and thought we were gonna slide back down but luckily Theo was able to back down the truck successfully although the clutch smelt funny. We tried again in a lower gear and whew, relieved, the colour returned back to my face, fingernails digging chunks out of the seat and Theo probably needed to change his underwear but we reached the summit. Now that’s one way to get your adrenalin pumping on a Monday morning. Who needs peak hour traffic! We headed off to Qolora village, sometimes referred to as Trennery, named after the old colonial hotel established there in 1908. We arrived in the village with a good feeling about the place. There was construction road works happening on the way in, which was most unexpected and we passed a cluster of deserted, some dilapidated rondawels with Qolora B & B, KITCHEN and SHOP written in big letters across the bright orange painted walls. We stopped to find out whats what. Imagine if we could park our truck there, re-establish the veggie garden, maybe get a cultural craft thing going with the local mammas or sell local food or or or….. The potential was endless as we let our minds run away at a pace fast enough to try out for the Olympics. We needed a place to park the truck and check out this village which had definitely peeked our interest. A road took us up a hill to the coolest, deserted braai picnic area, surrounded by dense tropical forest pockets with winding pathways to follow to yet another river mouth and a strip of beach which stretched as far as we would see. We decided to park the truck right there.

Once we were settled in and after exploring our immediate surrounding area, we visited the hotel and met the friendly couple who either ran or owned the place. Its not a hotel in the true sense but much quainter, very colonial style cute little bungalows tucked under cool date trees and other thick vegetation, and I half expected to find guests playing crocket on the perfect lawns shaded by more tropical trees or drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches in the pretty garden. I could almost taste the history of the place.

The next day we put clean clothes on, Theo even shaved and we rode the bike down to the village school to meet the principal and find out if they needed our help. Maria, the principal was very enthusiastic and pleased and called a quick meeting with the other 6 or so teachers, and it was settled. We would start the next day. WOW! We crapped ourselves. This was really happening. Now we needed to meet the headman and ask him if we could stay somewhere for free. We did suggest the rondavels but anywhere would work so long as we had access to running water and be able to plant a veggie garden so we could grow some of our own food. The idea of eating fish wasn’t panning out quite yet since Theo hadn’t had any luck so it looked like he would become a vegetarian after all. Yeah right! Anyway, a nervous little 6 year old boy walked us towards the sub headman’s house and shyly pointed us to his door. The old man’s English and our Xhosa was not good enough to communicate so the 3 of us walked back to the school for the principal to help translate our requests. The 2nd in charge told us that he would take it to the meeting and that he was very happy to have us.

We were ecstatic and nervous about our first lesson. We realized we better start working on a lesson plan for the next day since it looked like we were jumping right in feet first and would have a roomful of Xhosa children to teach. Yeehaa!

Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye

Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye


It was time for us to go. After restoring my mothers house and the garage to somewhat resemble its previous orderly fashion, although the pots would never be the same, we were ready to head off to the old Transkei. After contacting a few people up in the Eastern Cape who were involved in upliftment programmes, nothing concrete materialised as to an income but teaching English and sharing our knowledge in rural villages about covered the general idea and we would wing it. We were mentally ready. We packed the truck and squeezed in as many things a person might need for an indefinite period of stay in rural Transkei. We packed the obvious fishing gear, extra canvas for a makeshift tent to extend from the truck, two massive hammocks which I had made but which we never got around to testing and in fact we were under the impression that there weren’t any big strong trees out there. Our spade got strapped back onto the side of the truck, the panga inside, 10 different kinds of chilli seeds and a handful of butternut seeds and we were about as set as space would allow in our efforts to being self sufficient, which was our ultimate aim. We once again had loads and loads of spices although I swore we wouldn’t take as many this time round but somehow it never happened. In fact this time we even had Miso, Dashi, Tomyum paste and some other funny Japanese stuff, not 1 but 2 sushi mats, 5 litres of soya sauce, and enough salt which was left over from my seaweed products to spike the whole of Coffeebay’s blood pressure off the chart for the next 5 years. Then there was the cast iron hand mincer, why?! well, you never know what might come in handy. We squeezed in bags and bags of books, files and files of English lesson plans and even a blackboard. To keep my crafting desires stimulated I packed bags and bags of leather scraps which I could use to make more bags or even plait around a walking stick with a few beads, bags and bags of fabric scraps including 10 meters of left over wedding organza to weave into bags or make flowers or such things, 1300 wooden skewers left over from our corn dog days which could be turned into a shit load of flower stems or woven into more sushi mats in case people in rural villages fancied a bit of sushimi. We also wedged in the welder and angle grinder, both electric but you never know. We were prepared.

My mother’s hyena club wished us well and with a blessing and a prayer from them, we set off.

We made a detour to say our farewells to Theo’s family before following the road up the East coast. We were in no hurry to get anywhere and I wanted to adjust to being on the road again. Theo and I had not been communicating very well the year we’d been in Cape Town and we needed time to work on it. His habitual hours of facebook, constantly checking on line news about things such as what Lady Gaga wore to bed and his senseless daily dose of Judge Mathis on TV bugged me endlessly. The more perfect I became the more he retreated. He refused to change to my idyllic lifestyle and I realized I was drowning him with my constant pushing, which I thought was a dam clever observation but I didn’t know how to fix it. Like I said, I was almost perfect.

A few days on the road with no city life distractions and short before long we started opening up and sharing our thoughts. We were happy again. Happy with each other and excited about our adventure. Staying on the N2, ticking off the kilometres didn’t offer very scenic pullovers but was more cost effective diesel wise. At Groot Brak we found an old but still maintained day camp site at the river mouth so we stayed for 2 days while Theo fished and I hauled out our “Introduction to isiXhosa” booklet and we practised greeting each other and how to buy meat which Theo deemed more important. We also practised Poi. I’ll explain what Poi is in case you haven’t heard about it. Basically you attach 2 balls, each onto a piece of string or wedge them into the bottom of a pair of long socks (I put bags of salt in my socks since I had an endless supply of the stuff). Then you swing them round and round in different directions trying to avoid knocking yourself over the head. It’s cool. Except the bruising part. The heavier the ball, the more you bruise as I soon found out. Theo kept whacking himself in the knackers and my glasses sat at a strange angle on my face giving me a distorted view of the world. We loved our new pastime and soon we had a good rhythm going with the balls. The tutorials at www.playpoi.com were a great help but we had quite a way to go before reaching the final stage of swinging fire balls to music and I wasn’t ready to light my socks just yet. Apparently Poi is an old Maori custom which was part of the haka and warriors used to swing rocks tied to the end of a rope in order to strengthen their muscles and prepare themselves for war. These days it’s sometimes practised by trance party goers who spin their glow in the dark or fire balls to music pulsating through every nerve and muscle as they prepare themselves to dance through the night.



We stopped at Sedgefield and Knysna and leisurely strolled through a few craft markets which got me all inspired to make things with wire and fabric. Oh yes I forgot to add that I had also packed 3 big rolls of telephone wire which we found in my mothers garage ceiling which I planned to strip and make things with. We spent a night at a cool free picnic pullover in the forest between Knysna and Plett. We went for a stroll, me with my coffee cup in hand, in search of edible mushrooms. We got so enthralled with the jungle-like mangrove forest with ferns twice the size of a man, that before we realised it, we were lost and it took us three hours to find our way back to the truck.



Closer to East London we passed loads of river estuaries tucked away in dense natural forest vegetation with a couple of houses dotted here and there overlooking the sea and river mouth. What beautiful places. How awesome it must be to live there I thought. The hills, which there were many of, were all covered in thick dense thorn tree vegetation spreading for miles, reaching the horizon in every direction. Further along we passed game farms and the narrow road was flanked with lush thorn trees but we still spotted loads of Gemsbok, Nyala and Springbok close to the road.

We stopped for free at another cool free beachfront braai spot at Kidds Beach, 30 km’s before EL. We stayed there for 3 days waiting for the weekend to pass, going for long walks, drinking Pinacolada, (well Theo’s home brew Vodka liqueur), making love at midnight and even got caught in the rain. Every morning at 7 o clock we watched a pod of a hundred or so dolphins leisurely pass by in their morning patrol, surfing in the waves and having themselves a great time. On Monday we set off for East London to do some business and shopping. We needed to take the truck through road worthy which passed YEEHAA and then get the new yearly licence. It’s quite a rigmarole and moerse expensive (R5000) to keep our truck on the road.

We pulled in at Nahoon Caravan Park, and met the weirdest couple ever. Off the chart odd balls. They cornered us as we drove in and within minutes Theo and I started making excuses that we desperately needed a proper shower which by the way wasn’t a lie. The husband had a beard and was going for the Jesus look except he combed his hair from his left ear across his bald head all the way to the right side. He dashed around, alternating between playing his homemade pan flute and preaching nonsensical gibberish. He reminded me of a toothless, scrawny guy who lived in a pit, surviving on Juniper berries in a Monty Python comedy. He had a serious A.D.D. problem and we struggled to follow his gist but I caught the word Jawe, Zeus, and penis and I tried really hard to follow since it showed potential interest but I couldn’t grasp the plot. His wife told me that we were in the final season for the end of the world and that they were prepared by stocking up with dozens of tinned food and a solar panel. This was within 2 minutes of meeting us, and that’s when I moved upwind, lifted my arms and flapped them a few times in the hopes that my exposed armpits might distract her and give me the gap to disappear. After our first meeting, every time we needed the loos we sneaked passed the Evangelists’ camper home, which by the way was very nicely equipped and even had a big organ.

A much more pleasant meeting was getting together with John, who I had contacted from Cape Town before leaving and hoped he could give us some assistance or ideas about our plans. He was a really nice person and thought our idea of living in a rural village, assisting with teaching and any skills which we could offer the community was wonderful. His church and community work took him to rural villages so he was able to give us some direction as to where to find unspoilt rural villages that we could settle at. He suggested that Coffee Bay did not fall in the above category as the influx of tourists there had brought drugs, alcohol and polluted beaches. He suggested alternative places, gave us a map and told us God would guide us to the right village. We chatted about the people, fishing, road conditions and our ideas. His quiet calmness left us assured that we had made the right decision.



The next day we excitedly broke up camp, packed up our fantastic new sputnik washing machine which I’d used with squeals of delight, and headed into an unknown territory of Xhosa people, goats, mud houses and the Tokkolosie.