In search of the lemonwoods

Up. The thin path winds through the forest, up and up the mountain. And we keep going. V and I are searching for the grove of lemonwood trees that we’ve heard about. We’re not even sure that we are on the right path. But it doesn’t matter. Long ago, or so it seems, we settled into enjoying the journey.

The old man of the forest

The journey is taking us past the great-granddaddies of knobwood (Zanthoxylum) trees. These specimens are so magnificent that they make me catch my breath. Their thick embossed trunks stretch upwards to the light, taller than I’ve ever seen them. Likewise, the cabbage trees (Kiepersols): these are tall, slender creatures, their heads gracefully bobbing out of the forest. The yellowwoods are tallest of all.

Carpets of crocosmia

In the lower layers, there in the carpets of orange crocosmia and between the protrusions of twisted wood, are the juvenile trees. At the very top of the mountain – this must be the top – we thrill as we pick our steps across a spring running over a bed of smooth rocks.

And in the stillness of the forest – even the birds are silent – we are, most humbly, tiny specks of being in a big, big picture.

We’re wandering along the footpaths of the Xholora forest outside the little town of Stutterheim in the Amatola Mountains. We’ve found the most delightful escape: it is named, most appropriately, the Shire. We do expect to see hobbits any time.

Sea of grass

The guest chalets – there are four of them – are spaced across a sea of grassland, and their shape reminds me of boats. Or caravans. Or temples. Whatever they are, these cocoons of wood are beautiful feats of engineering, with curved walls and even curved glass.

As a child, I played on these forest roads

We’d never considered Stutterheim for a weekend getaway in the past. But it is a true pleasure, offering real peace and quiet within 80km of East London. And accommodation here is still pretty affordable.

Yesterday, we strolled along a forest dirt road, just around the next corner, and the next, until we’d walked for hours. And I remembered playing on just such a road in the Stutterheim forests when I was a small child and my grandmother Mary painted pictures of trees. Perhaps she painted that tree, or that one.

We never did find the lemonwoods (at least, I don’t think we did). We found a lot more.

Back where it began

Almost 30 years ago, V and I spotted each other for the first time. We were students at Rhodes University in Grahamstown at the time, both young and beautiful. It was an instant attraction across that uncrowded room, and we instantly bonded. For life, it seems.

Just too overwhelming ... on the Green. Pic: CHE

So this week, we are back where it began – in Grahamstown. We’re not students here (our son is, though), but we do tread the old paths, checking out the old haunts. Sometimes we even hold hands. It’s quite sweet.

Apart from a few new robots (traffic lights) and a great deal more student residence buildings, not that much has changed here. Physically, that is. Back then, the fledging and very small Grahamstown festival took place each winter when we all went home for a holiday. Now, it’s a must on the South African calendar.

We’ve joined a few thousand other people who have descended here for what is now known as the National Arts Festival. It has become a massive showcase for all kinds of art in South Africa. This year, there are some 3,000 events, so the choice is overwhelming.

My festival

You carve your own experience of this festival

This festival, I am learning, becomes what each person makes it for themselves. We should call it “my festival” because we each carve our own experience.

I’ve loved wandering the streets and the markets wrapped up in the warm clothes I never get to wear at home next to the sea. I especially love catching the marimba players – it’s a sound that touches me right in my soul. I’ve seen so much wonderful art in so many exhibitions that I really have lost count.

Over breakfast each day, V and I choose the shows we’d like to see. And there have been some unexpected delights. We were bowled over by the National Schools’ Big Band – the raw talent of the next generation of music stars, just beginning to be polished.

Hope and joy

I dragged V off to a dance show called “I am an African”, only to discover that it is set to a beautiful and uplifting poem written by my old friend, Wayne Visser. If he hasn’t seen this performance, I reckon he’d be mightily honoured by the way the choreographer and dancers have interpreted his words. My experience was one of hope and joy, and I know that would please Wayne. V, not a huge fan of dance, had lots of good things to say about it.

Two attempts to see some comedy were fruitless – once because the show was fully booked, and once due to incompetence. But that’s another story, and it’s not funny at all.

So we stumbled onto more music, and how lucky for us. The band called Take Note is a gem, and I love the fact that they’re home-grown Eastern Cape. This is happy, funky African jazz, delivered by the sharpest dressers, with instruments perfected and vocals just stunning. Watch them here. I want to hear them more and more.

Where people remember your name

For one reason or another, usually to do with music or food, I’ve landed up at Murambi Country Kitchen regularly over the past few weeks. I wish it could stay one of those best-kept-secret things, but that would be selfish (and it would probably end up closing, which would be sad).

The wall behind the stage is lined with old single vinyls

This lovely, gentle spot has become one of my favourite East London places, and lucky for me, it’s close to where I live. I love the setting, right next to Murambi Roses: the big windows look onto a small dam, and then onto open fields that flow to the sea.

Warm place

The proprietor, James, makes a visit here very special indeed. Somehow, he remembers not just your name, but also if you are a vegetarian. It’s warm in other ways, too: on these chilly winter days and nights, there is always a log fire going.

James allows us to drum here on quiet weekday evenings. We are usually accompanied by the property owner’s collie dog, who sings along to our djembe attempts. Truly. On Wednesdays, James, a musician himself, has been known to join in with other local musicians, who gather for jam sessions in his restaurant.

You can actually eat here, too. The menu is fairly limited, but the food is wholesome and nicely prepared. My friend, Mary, loves to have breakfasts here. Cakes for teatime are good, I am told. And I can vouch for the lunches.

Close-up of the placemats

The placemats on your table are old vinyl records, including a lot of Springbok Hits from the 1970s: delightful conversation pieces. As a child in the ’70s, I (like so many kids of the time) would blow my pocket money – a rand or two – on the latest Springbok Hits record. This was how we bought our music back then, and we’d play these records until they were so scratched that you could barely get a coherent sound out of them.

Musicians

The choice of placemats is appropriate because it’s largely through music that Murambi Country Kitchen is carving its place on the map. James has managed to draw quite an impressive range of musicians to perform here.

In summer, we have picnicked under the stars while taking in the sounds of the likes of Guy Buttery  and Nibs van der Spuy. In winter, we move indoors.

This past Saturday night, were treated to an outstanding performance by singer and pianist Shannon Hope. And we’ve just managed to get tickets, selling fast, to rock band Zebra & Giraffe’s show this week.

When the wind blows

When life deals you lemons, the saying goes, make lemonade. In the Eastern Cape, we have our own version: when it’s windy, fly a kite. And watch the march of the sand dunes. As for the lemons … well, eat them.

V and I head for a weekend break with friends at Mtati, about an hour’s drive from East London. It’s just over the Mgwalana River on the road to Port Elizabeth. We’re looking forward to spending time with dear friends, and even though we live at the sea, I’m keen to explore a part of the coast that I don’t know.

C makes the most of the wind with his stunt kite

Mtati is a gated settlement, where about a dozen houses nestle in the coastal forest. All are built of similar basic materials (face brick and wood). With care and low-pitched roofs, none jar on the laid-back feel of the area or intrude on each other. It’s a pleasant change from the sadly common practice of monstrous “homes” being put up without consideration for aesthetics or regulations, let alone neighbours.

So you can have money and taste. And all is well and good.

Howling south-westerly

But the south-westerly howls, sometimes up to 50km/hour, the entire weekend, and the temperature doesn’t edge above 18C.

No problem. M and C haul out their stunt kites and we walk through the milkwoods to the wide sandy beach, typical for this part of the coast. The kites pull and stretch every part of our bodies. Eventually, the fun ends when M’s kite smashes into the sand with enough force to shatter a graphite rod.

I resolve to scratch our kites out of the garage when I get home. We have two, one called a Skydancer (it sounds like a big mosquito) and another called a Phantom (it’s silent). We bought them when we lived in Durban, but put them away in Gauteng, where there was never enough wind to fly them. We’ve forgotten them in our decade back at the coast.

Shifting sands

Sand dunes on the march

We retreat to the house we’ve rented, and M and I suddenly notice something very strange indeed: the beach has shifted. Really. The sand dunes are bigger, and they have marched towards us. We can see the sand washing over the crests of the dunes and we swear that we can see them moving, like waves. In fact, sand dunes do move, and it’s windy enough here for us to actually see them doing so.

Clearly, I am an eastern Eastern Cape creature because I have never witnessed this. On the beaches of the Transkei, my childhood home, the sand dunes were excellent “ski slopes”: we’d scream down them on bits of cardboard. But we could never see the dunes moving. And the sand there is much coarser, as it is on the beaches around my village.

Feast, feast and more feast

My favourite kind of lunch

The chill factor escalates in the relentless wind. But our friends make it warm inside. So does the food. We punctuate non-stop conversations with feast after feast fit for royalty.

V poaches free-range eggs in a spicy tomato gravy for breakfast (I am the assistant). C and M serve up the kind of lunch I like the most: a smorgasbord of things like cheeses, stuffed jalapenos, marinated artichokes, olives and crusty bread rolls.

And while A braais (barbeques meat, which South Africans do come rain or wind) for supper, L cooks beetroot in berry juice, and then blends it with pecan nuts that she has boiled, lightly sugared and fried to recrisp. It’s a taste sensation (doesn’t turn my plate red, either). L, incidentally, eats sliced lemons with salt, just like that.

On Sunday, we lunch at the nearby Mpekweni Beach Resort. It’s pretty here behind big windows that look onto the sea. But it’s not a sensible place for vegetarians: like most of these kinds of establishments, there are countless magnificent meat dishes and even the salads are stuffed with flesh.

If a vegetarian wanted a “normal” meal, well, you’d be stuck with overcooked pasta in a white sauce. I give it a miss. Instead, I quaff two glasses of wine, descend on the cheeses and have several helpings of (magnificent) desserts. It’s a fine enough Sunday lunch. I’m not here for the food, anyway. I’m here for the company.

When freedom is normal

It’s Saturday on Freedom Weekend. My body is tired after this back-breaking work of digging out weeds, grass and other invasive stuff from the aloe garden. So I am happy to pounce on V’s suggestion that we drive to Chintsa East (a huge village on this part of the east coast, relatively speaking) to find a restaurant where we can have lunch.

 

A corner of my (legal) home: plenty of reason to smile

First stop is the Barefoot Café. I love the barstools here – they are made from old paint drums – and the menu is good, even for vegetarians. But it is packed – there is rugby on the TV – and it smells of beer, which is what pubs tend to do. 

We head to Michaelas, perched on the very top of a sand dune. I can’t tell you much about the quality of the food these days, but the views are spectacular. We climb into the see-through lift. It jerks and shudders its way up the sand dune, through the milkwood trees, wild banana (Strelitzia nicolai) and the coastal silver oak (this stuff is all over the place!).

Chop-chop

But Michaelas is about to close its doors for a private function, so we will have to be chop-chop (quick) about ordering food. We don’t fancy a rushed meal, so decide to have a drink on the deck overlooking the sea instead. There are a few other occupied tables, but it suddenly strikes me … “There are no black people here,” I hiss at V.

“What about me?” he says. “You don’t count,” I answer, without really thinking. He laughs because he’s a good sport.

Let me explain. Most South Africans are not racists, but, given our history, we are so very aware of race. And this is, after all, Freedom Weekend. Okay, for the sake of accuracy, it was Freedom Day on Friday, a public holiday to mark our first post-apartheid elections in 1994. With the help of Workers’ Day tomorrow, we are making a long weekend of it all.

Isis, another normality

As we should: it’s been 18 years since those first elections when we queued and queued to vote (with something like a 90% poll). We did it in our millions, we did it proudly, and despite four decades of the most appalling racism that structured everything in our lives, we did it peacefully. We should never stop celebrating.

Us, the criminals

V and I have our own little celebrating to do on this Freedom Weekend. He is of Indian descent and I am of European descent: for the first few years after we met, we were actually criminals because our relationship was illegal.

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and Section 16 of the Immorality Act were repealed in 1985. We married in 1986 and it did involve some sort of racial reclassification for me; I’m still not sure what race the morons made me. We do laugh about that now, but it wasn’t funny at the time.

Trying to go to some establishment for dinner or drinks was usually very difficult indeed. He would either not be allowed in or I would be harassed. So it’s kind of nice being able to drift to whichever place we feel like.

Anyway, back to the drinks with a view. On cue, it seems, a black man and two black women wander on to the deck. They take some photographs. They seem in a hurry to leave, but I hear one of the women say: “I like this place.”

So do we. We stay for a second drink. And we consider trying to get something to eat at Country Bumpkin or Murambi Country Kitchen.

A legal home

But we prefer to go home: we live in our home legally, and that means a lot because we remember the Group Areas Act that made it so hard for us to find somewhere to live, a home. That legislation reserved the most prime property for whites. It was repealed, along with the Population Registration Act, only in 1991.

We had to sneak around and hide away, breaking the law, of course. And we came across some nasty little “lefties”, spoilt white brats, who actually made profits out of sub-letting apartments in “white” areas to illegals.

That’s another story. I’ll share it with you sometime. In the meantime, let’s just savour freedom.

“I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.” – Nelson Mandela