There be giants here

Only the most intrepid of us – like my dear V – have ventured outside in the rain and wind of the past week. And he did it all for me.

Table two protects those saplings at the back from fiddling hands

I have quite an affair going with growing new plants from cuttings and seeds. But one of my previous cuttings tables (built precariously out of bamboo) simply rotted and collapsed; the other (an old plastic garden table) bowed so dangerously in its brittle centre that it was a miracle it could support even a whiff of plant. 

It had got to the point that most of my cutting pots and seedlings trays were scattered over the ground.

I mused, aloud and often, that my new tables would be really big and long to hold a lot of plants. They’d be made out of something strong and resilient, perhaps treated decking planks. Maybe they’d have a shelf to hold empty pots. All we needed was someone to actually build the thing/s.

Most unhandy

Table one is a beauty. I don’t even notice the slightly splayed legs

After more than a year of musing and keening, V, my most unhandy husband, steps up to the task. First, a big pile of decking is delivered. I fully expect that the pile will lie on the lawn, carving brown ruts into the grass, for a few months. But no, come the weekend, and construction of the first table begins in a respite from the rain.

V works tirelessly. I am called on to assist with holding things in place so he can attach the legs. It’s a very strange business: it involves holding the top at a guesstimate distance from the wall (hopefully the same as the length of the legs). This is probably why the legs splay, ever so slightly. But he adds braces to the legs. So all is well.

Something else is a little odd – this table is about a metre high, at least as wide and pretty long. “It’s for giants,” I declare. “You wanted a big table,” he says. It’s so sweet that I really don’t care, and fortunately, I am tall enough to be able to reach the back at a stretch.

The outer reaches

Now for table two. This time, the handy Lub joins in the task. And before I know it, there’s a massive, really massive, triangular table in the corner, using the posts of the old fence as supports. Now, this table … I can only reach the back of it by walking outside the garden and stretching over the fence. So I lug a few saplings outside to get to the outer reaches – they need to grow quite a bit bigger before they get planted out.

But I don’t care a bit. And I didn’t even mention that the shelves are still to come. These are such special tables, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them.

An ode to singing souls

Whether it’s a passing touch of the blues or sheer horror that can persist for years, bad times happen to all of us. When I’ve been able to stand back and look at my own bad times with some sort of detachment, I’ve been intrigued trying to understand why some of us lift out of the sadness, sometimes with new momentum, and some seem almost trapped in bleakness.

The most joyful colour of all ... yellow flowers, like this hibiscus in my garden, are R’s favourite

There are plenty of theories, some to do with being a pessimist or an optimist. Also, I’m not suggesting for a second that depression is not a real disease that needs medical treatment.

In a relaxed conversation with my aunt, R, she gifted me (well, that’s how it felt) with a sudden sharp clarity that was so obvious and so crazy that it made complete sense.

“I think I have a singing soul,” she said. This is always how it has been for her, she said: she’d always had this deep joy about life. And I felt something smile deep inside me, inside my soul maybe.

Only twice had she not felt her soul sing. The first time was when she went to university for the first time and was desperately homesick: my aunt went to medical school in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Can you imagine how hard that must have been for the young woman at that time? Not only was she heading off on her own to another city, she was also venturing into what was decidedly a man’s profession.

Evergreen

The second time was when her husband of almost 50 years died; that was just over a year ago. Theirs was a fairy-tale marriage. They married soon after meeting each other – they just knew. Every week of their life together, he gave her flowers, usually yellow, her favourite. And as he became more and more ill, he told her that now, in the winter of his life, she was his evergreen.

She went into a very dark place after his death, and even though she would smile at you, as she had always done, there was a sense of great fragility and great despair. This is not something that you “get over”.

I know from the death of my own father in his 50s, very young, that you never get over the loss of someone you love. But eventually, you are able to think about him, and even genuinely smile about him, without feeling that you have been gutted.

R had lost her life partner, a wonderful man who was literally the centre of her life; their three grown daughters also proudly declare that they are always “Daddy’s girls”. I was just one person who began fearing that R would not be able to live with her loss.

Bubbling

And here she was, telling me that she could feel her soul sing again, bubbling up inside her. It brought tears to my eyes and it made me feel immensely happy. I realised that I too have this thing, this singing soul: even when there is immense sadness, the joy will come back. In this clarity, I knew that I had recognised it in my cousins. 

So I tell Vick about it. She responds: “Thank you for telling me this … It is beautiful and brings tears to my eyes too. What a wonderful notion. Grandma (our Mary) definitely had it too. Aren’t we superbly lucky to have come from these exquisite souls? I shall keep this to read forever as it tops up my soul.”

And that’s why I am sharing it with you. If you listen, chances are you’ll hear your soul sing too. I hope you do.

My happy jeans with karma

Today, I am wearing my most beautiful jeans and they are making me feel happy, so happy that I want to dance. Not even the gloomy weather can get me down.

These epic jeans are going places – again

These jeans have a history, a karma, that is precious. Until last week, they belonged to my beloved friend, Kathy. She turned a regular pair of jeans (Lady Wranglers – that’s how old they are) into a work of art by combining layers of gorgeous fabrics, full of colour, texture and pattern, into something unique.

Kathy wore them for years – and yes, she loved to dance in them. They are full of joyful memories, including the whirlwind days of early romance with Phillip, her husband for the past decade. I can picture her – the blonde bombshell in her sexy jeans blowing Phillip away.

When she handed them to me last week, I was bowled over. With a sense of reverence, I attached another strip of fabric to the legs to accommodate my very long legs. Then I chopped off the waist – these jeans settled into the waist in a way that was once high fashion. I know the high-waisted stuff has been edging back, but it’s not for me.

“Editing”

But I cut off too much and had to sew on a new and lower hip/waist band for some decency. It was a good mistake that enriched the look, and the jeans fit perfectly. My daughter calls it “editing”.

I’m telling you all of this because it backs my conviction that truly beautiful things don’t have to be found in shops: I choose items with karma over the shiny new and soulless anytime. It’s better for the environment, too.

Beautiful things can be discovered anywhere, maybe even lurking in the back of your wardrobe. Often these pleasures – these previously loved things – are patiently waiting for a new life.

• Treat yourself: check out Kathy’s art here.

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.

Spreading the joy

Gardens are made to be shared – not just through sight and the other senses, but most importantly, through cuttings, roots and seeds that spread the joy and peace that only a garden can give.

One of Mary’s pics, of herself and her cousins, with her own inscription

I learnt that from one of the wisest people I've known – my paternal grandmother, Mary. She was a true plantswoman, among many other things. Some of my happiest memories are of running around her rose bushes, chattering to her while she marvelled at a bloom or fussed over a stubborn weed. It was in her various gardens that I got to know the smells of lavender and rose geranium, the feel of soft and furry lamb’s ear leaves, the taste of cherry guavas.

Generous spirit

Beautiful, kind Mary

She would always be handing out seeds or cuttings from her garden. Simple yet beautiful nasturtiums were among her favourite flowers, and four gardens later, many of the nasturtiums in my garden have grown from seed that Mary originally gave me. She seemed to gain such pleasure from knowing that a cherished plant would now also be treasured in someone else’s garden. It struck me, even very young, that this was a true generosity of spirit.

So every time I take a cutting – for use in my own garden or to pass on to a special person – I think of Mary. And I like to think that she would approve of my attempts at propagation. In fact, I know that she would have many words of gentle encouragement.

Army of new plants

My system seems to work quite well. In a tucked-away spot behind the washing line that gets afternoon shade from the ngwenya tree (wild plum, Harpephyllum caffrum), an army of plastic pots brim with new plants. These cuttings are mostly from my own garden (I also raid friends’ gardens), and they include geranium and pelargonium, scabiosa, fuschia, daisies, lavender, rosemary, felicia, plectranthus and osteospermum.

All of these grow really easily from cuttings. Aloes and other succulents do, too, but they will usually grow from cuttings that are shoved into the ground; best to let them dry for a few days to avoid rotting, though.

There’s also row upon row of baby clivias, growing from seed. These will take about three years to get to flowering stage.

Secret

A perfect mini greenhouse

And here’s my “secret”: I cut the top off a plastic cold drink or water bottle, and invert it over a new, watered cutting. It forms a perfect mini greenhouse. You seldom have to water the cutting again. The plant takes care of that itself through transpiration: essentially, the cutting takes up water from the soil and then releases it into the atmosphere, kind of like sweating.

It’s quite a thrill seeing the water droplets form on the inside of the bottle and run down to sustain the plant. I remove the bottle when I’m certain that the cutting has grown some roots.

This method has increased the “strike rate” of my cuttings: four out of five, instead of two or three out of five, usually take. It lets me experiment with more demanding plants, like roses, and it gives me a constant supply of plants to fill empty corners, without having to spend a fortune at the garden centre. And one of the nicest things about it, for me, is that I give something meaningful to people I care about. Thanks to Mary.

Becoming of age

The east wind is up early, but even as it picks up speed, there’s a sense of peace. A bird is calling in the forest. Otherwise, it’s quiet. You can’t even hear the sound of the sea from the vegetable garden. The calm soaks through me, and it strikes me that it’s so far removed from the furore raging in my country. I feel slightly sick.

The old visible in the new

South Africans lived through 48 years of a nightmare in which we were forced by law to centre our existence on racism. By far the most of us never want to go back to that ugly place. But it’s like an infected wound, and it festers.

This time, it has taken an artwork to bring the issues to the fore: not only racism, but also freedom of expression and the deep layers of hurt that still exist. I won’t repeat the saga of the painting dubbed The Spear here, but there are plenty of excellent pieces written about it (try here and here for some of the best). 

The sadness of it all weighs on me – cry, the beloved country, indeed – and I am inclined to lose myself in a corner of my garden. Then the phone rings. It is Kathy: her son, Daniel, is visiting from Cape Town and is ready to make good on my request to “fix” my 29-year-old sailor’s tattoo. Today, if I want. I want.

Meaning

Daniel, you see, is a tattoo artist who is not only outstanding at his art, but also pretty good at reading people. So he recognises that the funny little blue swallow on my arm has meaning for me. 

The artist at work

On a hot February day in Durban, my dear Swiss friend Marcel and I wandered into a tattoo parlour off Grey Street. I chose a swallow for my left arm; he chose a butterfly for his right. An old man with shaky hands did Marcel’s tattoo, wiped his needle on an old rag and then plunged it into me.

That was in 1983, and tattoos were about as anti-mainstream as you could get. The bird, for me, was about freedom and it was a way of saying “screw you” to a mainstream society where apartheid ruled.

Mainstream

Since then, of course, apartheid has gone and tattoos have moved into the mainstream as an art form where cleanliness is supreme. Take Daniel: he’s one of the beautiful people and the intricate tattoos that cover most of his body are true works of arts.

He studies my arm, thinks a while, and produces an image that is perfect for me: a cluster of colourful flowers swirling around the relined swallow. With the help of some wine, Kathy and Bryony’s company, and Daniel’s care, I sit through the hour and a half that it takes. It’s painful, but less so than the pain I experienced in the 15 minutes or so that it took the old man to put the original tattoo on my arm.

More complex

My swallow – my old thumbs-up to freedom – is still there. It’s a lot prettier and somewhat more complex now, as so much good art is. It was only partly a joke when I told a friend that my swallow was growing up.

It makes me think again of the rainbow nation that our beloved Desmond Tutu spoke about: it’s still there and it’s growing up. And growth is seldom painless. We continue finding ways to deal with the hurts and to conquer racism, and sometimes we do it loudly and in chaos. But we do it, and we will do it. We know that we have to. It’s who we are; it’s where we live.

PS: You should be able to view Daniel’s Facebook profile here.

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.

Bubbling from the pot

I’m sitting here, quietly watching the sea, when the peace is shattered by raucous laughter – my own, that is. I am giggling with my cousin, Vick, who happens to be in London.

Kif! In other words, those are pretty nice shells

We chat all the time, you see, thanks to smartphones, facebook and email. She’s just told me that she thought she was being “very international” by using the word “fundi” until it dawned on her that no-one understood what she was saying. When a South African says “fundi”, they mean “expert”. To most others, it is gobbledygook.

Strange variety

What makes it even funnier is that Vick has been in a very senior position on a very large UK newspaper, but speaks a rather strange variety of the English language: the South African kind.

I, too, did not know that “fundi” was a South African word, and I raise it with my sister K (she lives in Geneva, remember, where she has a top job in a big multinational). “Oops, I use it all the time,” she says.

A bit of research reveals that “fundi” actually comes from the Nguni (Xhosa and Zulu) word for teacher: umfindisi. It also has some other fairly obscure meanings: we could, for example, be referring to a fundamentalist greenie in Germany (but we’re not).

So we chuckle at ourselves. The truth is that South Africans rejoice in this rich English that has bubbled out of our post-apartheid melting pot.

Peppered chats

We liberally pepper our chats with words that we know are South African, like “eish” (I’m shocked/annoyed/amazed), “eina” (ouch), “kif” (nice/pretty), “muti” (medicine), “lekker” (nice) and, even, when we’re very cross, “bliksem” (a naughty person, or to hit something). Those words – there are a lot of them (try here for a taste) – are Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu or any one of South Africa’s 11 official languages.

We also have another whole decidedly South African lexicon of English that we use all the time – and usually, we don’t know there is anything odd about it. That applies to even the most sophisticated, globally speaking, of us: people like Vick and K.

K, for example, adds that she’s just told an American friend that she would “hold thumbs” for his wife, who’s just been for a job interview. “He asked how one held thumbs. When I explained, he said, ‘Oh you mean, like crossing fingers’.”

When she visited a few weeks ago, we shrieked with laughter as she related how she was greeted with blank stares when she declared that she would “fetch” her daughter. You fetch a thing (a dog fetches his bone?), not a person. Then she kept us in hysterics as she ran through a string of phrases that she has discovered are thoroughly South African. So we will say that something is “not a train smash” (not so bad). We will declare, “serious” (pronounce “see-ree-ous”, with lots of exclamations marks), when we really want to make a point. Or we will say “ag, shame” when something is cute.

Newsroom run-ins

And when Vick visited, we literally rolled on the floor with laughter as she described her London newsroom run-ins with our peculiar language. She had problems, she said, with “just now”, which South Africans interpret as “in a little while”. I am quoting her from memory, but she says it’s close enough.

“When British people say it, they mean, ‘immediately’. So at first, a lot of the subs thought I was being very pushy because I kept asking them if they would complete tasks and stories ‘just now’. Eventually we adapted it and they would ask me, Do you mean an English ‘just now’ or a South African ‘just now’?”

Robots

To South Africans and no-one else, a “robot” is a “traffic light”. As Vick discovered: “I once asked the picture editor to put across an image of a robot – I needed to use it as a cut-out. I waited and waited ... We were getting dangerously close to deadline, so I strode across to urge the picture desk into action. She opened up a folder full of pictures she’d put across in response to my request ... It was crammed with computer robots from science fiction movies!

“And then there was the day when I complimented one of my colleagues on her new jeans. I said, ‘Ooh, I like your pants!’ She looked horrified, blushed, and then asked me whether her trousers were see-through. It’s ‘trousers’ over here; ‘pants’ are knickers.” 

On that note, I am going to water the vegetable garden before the sun goes down.

Birdie business

Sunbird weaving her pretty nest

We are drinking tea, Kathy and I, at her lounge window. Right outside the window, a sunbird is busily weaving her nest. She is using bits of stringy vegetation (apparently, they also use some spider webs) and shreds of fabric that Kathy has purposely left out. So it’s quite a pretty, arty affair. 

It is probably a malachite sunbird; these tiny birds are quite prolific around here. This little brown thing is a female; the males are the brightly coloured ones. There has been a flurry of bright green wings at my bedroom window: that’s a male.

Rollercoaster

Red-collared barbets perch outside my bedroom window

Kathy seems to have a particular pull for birds. For a while, a red-collared barbet moved in with her and Phil. They called him Rollercoaster because of the way he flew at them and over them. He became a beloved pet. They would even get baby-sitters (bird-sitters?) for him when they went away. He would love to sit on visitors’ heads and nibble on their ears.

And then, one day, probably when he was in his adolescence, Rollercoaster upped and flew away. He settled with a couple on the other side of the village for a week or two, and then moved on. K and P were very sad, but understood it as the way of things.

We watch the sunbird in wonder, and then we go back to drinking our tea. Birds, you see, are as natural as breathing here.

Bashing, smashing

A family of hornbills lives noisily in the forest around my garden, and we didn’t bat an eyelid when one of them kept bashing his large beak against the kitchen window. I thought he was reacting to his own reflection until someone kindly pointed out that he was in fact smashing his prey to death. That would explain the strange smears on the glass.

More of a mystery right now is the very large bird of prey that periodically perches on the telephone pole behind the house. We think it’s an eagle, but have no idea what type. I managed to take a photograph: it’s blurred, but you can just make out some colouring.

Regulars

There’s a host of regulars: the barbets that like to sit on the branch outside my bedroom; the mousebirds that scoff their way through the fruit trees; the little wagtails that dance across the grass. Among my favourites, though, are the kingfishers, both pygmy and malachite. They especially like to sit on the wooden fence around the vegetable garden, or, to give me a lovely respite from hard thinking, outside my office window.

Eagle on the pole

Hornbill on the verandah

Kingfisher at my office window

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

The art of wasting time

In my former life, I had a “proper” job and tried my best to be a decent mother (mothers are always full-time, no matter what else they are doing). I was far too busy to waste time on things like being a member of a book club. Now, I am a member of not just one, but two, book clubs, and I treasure the time I waste with the clever, interesting women who gather to drink wine, laugh, cry, discuss books, and make sense of our lives.

When the royalty, Isis and Angel, allow, I waste time learning to drum

I’ve just started wasting time learning to play the djembe drum and, until quite recently, I wasted oodles of time going to pottery classes.

In fact, I’ve become a master at time wasting. It is a real art. I can spend ages staring at the sea, for example, watching the swell and assessing the crazy array of blues and greys. And I can beachcomb for hours.

Just this morning, I watched a very large pod of dolphins (maybe more than one) swim past while a flock of gannets dived madly into the sea. Perhaps it’s an early sign of the sardine run that is still to come. It was a frenzy, but not at all hurried. I know because I watched it all.

Enriched

And I don’t feel guilty, not any more. Instead, I feel enriched, deep down inside.

You see, in my former life, I ran around doing urgent things, so much that I seldom had time to do the important things. Today, I do the important things – like be with my friends and my family, be fully aware of this amazing environment, and take care of my own needs.

Crises and urgent things still crop up, of course, but they are part of the picture, not the whole picture. And my work – which I do enjoy very much, by the way – has become part of my life, not my whole life.

Cracking the work ethic

Beachcombing yields all kinds of delights

But it was very hard work to crack that Calvinistic work ethic: the ingrained notion that work is somehow good for the soul. I’m not for a minute suggesting that we shouldn’t work – that would be silly – but, rather, that we try to find a way that works for each of us to put work where it belongs, as part of life. 

So when I left Gauteng 11 years ago to get a life here in the Eastern Cape, I worked very hard indeed as a freelancer, and congratulated myself on those months that I earned more than I had in the employment I had left. It didn’t take long for the burn-out and dissatisfaction to creep back. And I wondered why I had given up the career if I was trying so hard to maintain the status quo.

A new way of being

I began to understand that my job had been a primary part of my identity for a long time, and that I would have to learn a new way of being in the world. I went from the hectic extreme to the idle other side (didn’t like that at all) until, eventually, I did find a balance and things began to fall into place. It was when I could “waste time” without an ounce of guilt that I knew I was well on my way. 

My life is nowhere near as busy as it once was, but it is fuller than ever before. It remains a learning process; perhaps it always will. I like it that way.

PS: V has pointed me to this article, written by a former car worker, Walter Johnson. Published 26 years ago, it’s as timely as ever. It goes to the root of that irrational idea that the harder you work, the more likely your salvation, that work is “the measure of a person’s moral worth and character”. Then he examines how and why the ethic that drives the work-consumption-debt cycle is sustained. It’s really worth a read.

Everyday magic

From the aloe garden, he stares and stares

Girl fairy helper is blowing out the candles on her birthday cake – she is four – when she spots him. “Buck,” she says.

Buck (antelope), indeed. He is the big male bushbuck, who tends to be quite furtive: the females (his harem, I suppose) are the ones that we see more often. He walks swiftly and decisively, and stops in the aloe garden. Trying to hide behind the garden shed, I manage to take a few pics on my phone.

But he knows I am there, and he stares me down. After a few minutes, I scuttle off to eat cake with smarties and pink icing.

Later, perhaps an hour later, boy fairy helper – he’s still six – is shadowing me, as he does, and chattering nonstop, as he does, while I clatter at the sink outside the kitchen door. Seeing that we live half in the bush, we wash our pots and pans here, not in the kitchen. When it rains, we don’t wash the pots. Simple.

Huge

He wins the staring contest

Suddenly, there is a movement, and there he is, under the milkwood trees. The ram is huge. I am almost 6 feet tall, and I swear that if you include his horns, he is at least as tall as me. Boy fairy helper (bless him) draws in his breath, and we are both as quiet as mice. 

The ram does not bullet away in fear; he gives us a rather bored look and saunters off. He was surely snacking on my garden while I was eating cake.

My uncle Aub, a farmer and a true man of this soil, sees the photos and he is quite excited. Do you think he is the only male around here? I ask. It’s possible, Uncle Aub says patiently, that there are other males in the area, but this must be the senior buck. Only the senior would be brave enough to come so close to us.

Alpha male

Gathering on the field behind the house

Wow! The alpha male. I am feeling suitably thrilled and privileged until I remember that I have seen this ram up close before – in Kathy’s garden on the other side of the village. Or maybe there’s another ram on that side? Anyway, he eats her herbs and vegetables. Oh, and her pelargoniums, all of them. She waves her arms at him – much as I do to the damn monkeys – and threatens to turn him into biltong.

A view from my office

Privilege

But the fact that we are so blasé about something so magical shows that we are very privileged indeed. We see these beautiful, graceful creatures – usually the babies and the females, but sometimes also the males from a distance – almost every day.

There are also some blue duiker, the cutest little things, but they are far more skittish than the bushbuck. They scurry out of the bush to grab fruit that has fallen to the ground.

Poaching has been a real problem in this reserve (and elsewhere), and the ranger talks of a pack of dogs from a nearby farm that have run wild here and killed some of the buck. The duiker remain terrified of humans, and sadly, that’s the way it should be.