As the Stomach Turns (If you can remember which TV programme that line comes from, you’ve scored Brownie points)


Our daily life here in Qolora is not that different to life back in Cape Town, well other than logistics and a few finer details like earth, wind, fire and water. Otherwise life here is pretty similar to being in the concrete jungle. For instance, on washing days my UDD (underarm dingle dangle) flaps around vigorously as I manually spin my very upmarket Sputnik washing machine through its wash and rinse cycle. The makeshift table which develops a life of its own when the Sputnik is in full swing, tries desperately to worm its way down the hill in pursuit of the goats, with me in tow. To stabilize everything, I have to pin the table down with my foot, hold the machine in place with my left hand and spin like mad with the right. I get an upper body workout without having to fork out gym fees. I don’t mind carrying pots of boiling water and traipsing back and forth to the garden tap and in fact I consider myself lucky that I don’t have to hunch over a bucket or make a fire to boil the water.

We also have baking days. How else do you think we get bread? As long as it’s not windy, we can fire up Theo’s “boer maak ‘n plan” oven. He gave a 25 litre thinners drum a facelift by cutting the lid off to become to door which we open or close with a pair of pliers. He rammed a wire rack inside and tada. He makes a fire underneath, adds extra coals on top and our oven is set to go. So long as it’s not too windy so that the coals blow away. On those days Theo cooks pap or flapjacks inside. I’ve even baked biscuits and an end of the month version of lasagne using macaroni and soya in our eye level oven. We save a fortune on oven cleaner!!

The upside of living in our cosy rondavel is that there’s no major housework to do. There is a downside to living in one room though. Being woken up at 3 in the morning by a roving beam of light sweeping across the room similar to a police raid, can be disturbing. When Theo wakes up in the middle of the night he tiptoes to the kitchen corner so as not to wake me and with his head torch on full beam, he scans the shelves looking for ingredients to cook dishes such as curry afval. The first time the swooping lights woke me, I ducked my head under the blankets, fearing the inevitable. We all know the aliens will arrive some day and I thought this was it. The body snatchers were hovered above our hut scanning for my perfect vessel to be beamed up and used for reproduction and probably they’d stick probes with flashing lights up my bum. But then the smell of Theo’s afval wafted up my nostrils and I knew I still had more time on Earth before I was needed elsewhere.

Our rondavel roof is propped up with a centre pole (which is actually off centre) but unfortunately it’s too gnarly to wrap my limber self around for pole dancing. I’d consider climbing it and doing a swan dive onto our wobbly bed if the woodwork was not so rickety. Someone has mounted a ceiling fan (which is not connected to electricity) in the most peculiar way up at the top of said pole. I’m not sure which came first - the fan or the pole but the intriguing device will never serve to cool anyone down. I’m posting a picture of it.

Most days we can collect water down at the garden tap and we’ve run a 40 m cable from across the way for electricity so what can I say, we’re pretty comfortable.

Now I’m off to mix some dugga from mud and water as I’ve seen the mammas doing around here. That’s how you repair a leaking grass roof it seems and ours drips when it rains. Oh well at least we wont have to budget for handyman call out fees.

Lately there are just not enough hours in a day to get to everything but I’m as happy as a tick on a cow.

It’s just the bare necessities, the simply bare necessities of life.

It’s just the bare necessities, the simply bare necessities of life.


I wonder if I’ll ever understand the ways of the Xhosa people here. I’ve only been here a month so naturally it’s way too soon to even imagine that I’m close to knowing what makes them tick.

The cultural village rondavels where we are staying has given me lots to mull over. A few years ago some or other concern, I think it was the department of water conservation, pumped a lot of money into this development centre and it seems as though this place pumped. There is a massive woodwork rondavel where they made cupboards, chairs, blinds and screens from bamboo. At the leather rondavel, it seems as though hundreds of leather shoes, key rings, book covers and bags were produced. The dusty filing cabinets filled with fishmoth riddled paperwork indicates that different skills were taught here but when the development group left, for what ever reason I don’t presume to know, things just stopped. The fence has fallen down around vegetable garden which is now a field but the nursery is still standing although the sprinkler system doesn’t work anymore and in fact none of the taps around here work since apparently the road construction diggerloader rode over and broke all the irrigation piping at the project rondavels. The handful of crafter women left over from the project just sit around waiting for a miracle or for someone to fix things. That’s the way things appear to be from an outsider point of view. When I questioned Mandisa, who is making a desperate, albeit futile, effort to get things going again in some way, about the possibility of selling the machines for scrap and using the money constructively she showed concern that the people who ran the programme before, might return and demand their equipment back. The programme ended in 2004, which was 8 years ago and the sewing machine, the pattern press and the R100 000 or R200 000 woodwork saw is now a scrap of rusty metal from rotting outside in the rain ever since that rondavel roof caved in. About 4 or 5 women, Mandisa’s team, still come down here occasionally. They have made a few crafts and planted a few seedlings in the nursery which they want to sell but don’t have an offset. We mentioned to Faneka, one of these women that there is an opportunity right here on our doorstep to cook food for the 20 or so construction workers who are building a road here and who Mandisa rents out a few rondavels to for a site office and accommodation for couple of the workers. She seems very keen and wants to learn to cook but has missed out on the past 6 months that the workers have been here. There’s no electricity in the kitchen here but there is a lovely big gas stove and an empty gas bottle. She doesn’t have the know how or the money to lay out to get started. We hope to get this project going soon and I will write about its progress.

A lawyer from Cape Town has sometime ago, kindly sponsored stacks of books and computers which are in another rondavel here. I don’t know why but no-one ever bothered unpacking the books before so this week Theo and I helped ourselves to some of the dusty bamboo shelves from the woodwork rondavel and I’ve unpacked all the boxes, sorted and alphabetized all the books. The library now has one whole rack of wonderful reference books, another with great fiction books and a third with lovely story books for the younger children. There are even another two racks of high school text books which I’ve unpacked as well as a bunch of puzzles for the kids to do. Apparently during the school term, the high school kids come down here to use the computers but there’s no-one around to teach them so I don’t know how much they get used.

So, as a 1st world city person you are probably shaking your head, tsking away about the backward way things happen here. Let me tell you about a few other things which have come to my notice recently. A few days ago I asked Mandisa where she lived, assuming her house was over the road or down past the general dealer since, when she does pitch up here, she arrives at about 9 o clock in the morning and her 3 kids go to school where we teach which is down the road next to the general dealer. She turned around and pointed to the hill in the distance and told me that her house was way over there, more than 5km’s away and that’s why sometimes her children can’t go to school because when it rains, they can’t cross the river. Wow. So they don’t just jump into their double cab and drop the kids off at school when the weather is bad like the folks do back home. A few afternoons ago, 2 matric students pitched up at the computer room to see what was happening after hearing that we were here. They stayed a while, fiddling on the computers, playing music and we chatted in English. I offered to help them with homework projects etc when school starts again in 2 weeks time. Soon thereafter they said they had to leave before it got dark since they had to walk home. They live 10 km away from here so I guess they will spend a huge chunk of their afternoons walking to and from the library in their efforts to get their homework done to pass matric. No internet access at this library or in their bedroom at home so that they can cut copy paste like the kids do back home who prepare for the same matric paper. Today being Saturday is shopping day for many people here. It was raining so I stood in my rondavel doorway watching the countryside get wet and I noticed 3 women walking in the distance. They were on their way over the hill, laden with shopping balanced on their heads and clutching bags in both arms. I wondered how far they had walked already or how far they still had to go or whether they first needed to make a fire to cook dinner since I doubted they were carrying take away Pizzas to feed their families. Every day this week I’ve seen a bunch of kids with buckets on their heads off collecting water somewhere. Half the village’s water has been off for nearly a week again and it’s the 2nd time since we moved in here but luckily there is a rain tank here at the nursery where Theo fills our 20 litre plastic containers. I’m waiting for the water to come on again before I can do my washing in my fancy Sputnik washing machine which I proudly showed to some of the women here who admired it. Many of the people here do have those big green rainwater tanks but they don’t exactly run through to a tap in their kitchen or bathroom like they do in the city so you fill a bucket manually to wash dishes or your body. We have electricity in our rondavel (well we run an extension lead from the site office 60m away) so I’m thankful that I can quickly first boil my water and not have to make a fire first every time.

Last night we visited at Tim’s house (our new friend who I’ll tell you all about later) for a braai and a welcome shower. One of his workers, Doemesan, who had lingered a little later than usual and didn’t go home when the rest did, ended up hanging around for about 3 hours waiting for the moon to come out. He had to walk home, I don’t know how far but I do know that he also lives over the hill and had to walk through the river and his only light was the full moon which only rose at about 10 o clock. There’s a bus which runs to Kentani then on to Butterworth daily but that’s at 7 in the morning so great if you work there (I doubt anyone here does) or need to go there for shopping but otherwise around here after work (the lucky handful who do while the rest live on a government grant) you walk home no matter how far it is. Doemesan said we are teaching at the wrong school and that we should rather come over the hill nearer to his house to teach at the poor school where his kids go. I didn’t even know that there was another primary school other than the high school 15 km’s from here so I wonder if it’s as modern as the one we teach at which has an actual building and even has electricity in most of the 8 classrooms.

I haven’t even scratched the surface yet of finding out what these peoples dreams or ambitions are or what makes them happy or sad so I know that I have a lot to learn. What I have figured out so far is that the Xhosa people here have basic daily needs to attend to, like being able to get to school, access to water, collecting firewood and a simple thing which I take for granted such as the time of day is pertinent to going somewhere on foot like the library to learn how to type and still make it home before dark and definitely not what time the Cape Town Museum closes or what time the next episode of National Geographics is shown on the dish. Fanciful and complicated ideas like starting ones own business or the desire to know the diet of Eskimos are not high on the list of the adults here in Transkei. I on the other hand, once again forgot to close the door down at the ablution rondavel and now the goats have left what looks like 5 kg’s of chocolate coated raisons all over the floor. Oh Dear.



So, look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities of life. Forget about your worries and your strife. I mean the bare necessities, old Mother Nature’s recipes that brings the bare necessities of life. Wherever I wonder, wherever I roam I couldn’t be fonder of my big home.

SOUTHERN NAMIBIA

Feral horses mountainous Namibia

Feral horses near Aus

Friendly baker at Solitaire

Namibia desert

Luderitz Grosse bucht beach

SOUTHERN NAMIBIA

Theo peeled the Hoodia plant and we chewed it.  My mouth filled with a liquorice flavoured foam and the more I chewed the more it lathered.  I felt like a rabid dog, drooling at the mouth and the heat was enough to make a person want to strip naked and kill.  I couldn’t swallow the cactus foam but what the heck I had diarrhoea and didn’t have an appetite anyway.  Our freezer couldn’t cope with the heat either and 20 kg of vacuum packed meat started defrosting but quite frankly my dear, I didn’t give a dam.  Cold water and beer was all I wanted.  F.Y.I. they didn’t inspect our truck at Vioolsdrif border post.

We followed the Orange River on the Namibian side for 2 days, stopping every now and then to lie in the luke warm water, clothes and all, to cool off.  The greenery on its banks was a pleasant relief.    We arrived in Luderitz and camped on the beachfront for free with running water, loos, braai spots and best of all it was lovely and cool at the coast.  After living on gallons of water for 2 days, I’ve decided what the heck, I might as well make an effort about my body which has turned to shit, so I’ve started doing toning exercises on the beach.  I feel great and have a new zest for life.  Heck I even feel like going for a jog or a swim or singing at the top of my voice.  I might end up with the body of a wrinkly 16 year old and if I walk around with my arms crossed behind my head, I even have perky boobs - well almost.
After 4 days of relaxing, we headed north towards Walvis Bay along the gravel road which was 800 km through the desert.  The mountainous landscape is spectacular.  You drive over one mountain range only to find another one stretched out in the distance from east to west as far you can see. They range from purple to pink to brown and rocky and some seem as though they are fixed to the earth in a sea of mist from the mirage created by the shimmering heat.  Its hot, rainy season now in January (yeeha hardly any other tourists) so we took a fat chance opting for the gravel road, which when dry is in excellent condition but wet and slippery mud could be a different story.  The map showed towns about every 200 km so initially I didn’t know what all the hooha was about to make sure you are prepared for the desert.  We soon discovered that places like Beta, Helmeringhausen, Sesriem and Solitaire, all indicated on the map, aren’t towns but rather just a fuel stop and shop selling essentials like expensive cold beer and offered overnight facilities.  The friendly people all speak Afrikaans which made me feel quite at home as apposed to being in a foreign country and Theo fell in love with the jolly baker at Solitaire selling seed bread and delicious confectionary.    We passed about 6 cars the whole 800 km’s, and yes if you get caught in the desert without water or have an accident, you definitely could die.  Our cell phone doesn’t work out here but we do have a ship to shore radio although I don’t know how it works yet so if Theo does have a heart attack from all the chilli bites which he made from the excess of potjiekos meat which bounced around in the caravan drying on a rack as we headed north, I’ll have to dig into the recesses of my brain to recall the first aid taught to us a year ago. 
You don’t see much life except lots of Springbok and Gemsbok which have adapted to the harsh environment by being able to survive at body temperatures 5 degrees higher than normal without frying their brains.  Near Aus, we saw 100 or so skinny feral horses who had survived the tough dry winter and we passed surprisingly green beef and sheep farms where it had recently rained.  Further north we saw a few harems of Zebras nibbling on small tufts of grass, sprouted from recent rains but mostly we drove through dry gravelly landscape, beautiful to look at but difficult to survive in.  I was reminded of the koue bokkeveld back home in SA except this was on a much bigger scale.
We arrived in Walvis Bay and walked the town which had all the same franchise shops as in SA and where everyone used rands and spoke Afrikaans.  We searched for a bar and drank cold draught on tap and of course the mandatory Jugermeister. 
Tomorrow is another day to tackle my non existent six pack and perky boobs on the miles and miles of beachfront stretched out before me.