The main Festival venue was a field near the entrance to Tesselaarsdal, between the road and the river, with a curving line of ancient Oak trees providing shade for most of the stalls. The first good sign was the fact that the stall-holders turned up. Early. Tables and chairs were carried out of homes in “Die Spruit”, as the RDP development is now known. For some, it meant carrying the material for their stall down the cement-brick road past the primary school and Dutch Reformed Church and then on to the tarred main road through town. Well, let’s be specific: the piece of vote-gathering tar which is shorter than the distance between the two road signs proclaiming “Beware of Stray Animals”.
Only people living within the district or born in the area were allowed to have stalls, with preference given to local produce. The differentiated price structure led to a brief, lively debate at one of the open planning meetings, since some families operated stalls jointly with family members who had left for the bright lights of bigger towns or Cape Town.
Happily, the rain-squalls soon disappeared, and the day turned bright and sunny, mercifully cooled by a light wind that has gathered strength every day since! Goods varied from hand made Christmas decorations, homemade cakes, ginger beer, fynbos plants and a few white-elephant stalls to the two local estate agents. The four subscribed entrants in the Potjiekos competition hoped to sell their stews to hungry visitors at the bonfire and sing-along that evening.
Ninety-Four year old Tannie Rina cuts the ribbon to open the first ever "TessFes" on Saturday 4th December 2010
Great care was taken to keep the entire day free of Politics, so the “TessFes” was opened officially by a gaggle of the oldest residents. The opening ceremony was a lesson in adapting to life in Tesselaarsdal. Posters in Caledon proclaimed that the “Fees” would run from 10h00 till 16h00, while the word went out to locals that the opening ceremony would take place at 09h00, with a view to ensuring that everyone was ready. The time-stamp on my Nikon tells me that Tannie Katrina Stewart cut the ribbon across the road at precisely 11h00. What could have been a meagre event was enlivened by a surprise contribution from a member of the town’s fledgling soccer team: Spencer, also an ardent pigeon fancier, offered to release his homing pigeons to liven up proceedings – an inspiration which only occurred to him on Friday night. Due to timetable slippage all round – and “The Tesselaarsdal Young Stars” success in the tournament they had organised – it became clear that the young man was going to be in the middle of a match on the outskirts of town at the crucial moment. To keep his promise, Spencer used a week’s worth of air-time and called in every favour he could to arrange transport and delegate the handling of his precious birds to the care of a friend. Spencer’s birds fluttering out of a bakkie canopy made the moment special.
Out of Towners were fascinated by a DVD of veterans telling tales of life in the town in days gone by
At the Information Centre, some distance away in the centre of the village, visitors were enthralled by a half-hour video I cut from material shot by Simon Baillie-Cooper late last year. Tesselaarsdal Action Group Chairman, Kobus Visser, interviewed four of the senior villagers about “Die Ou Dae”. (The Old Days) The purpose of the show was to stimulate memories and encourage people to provide either historical material or leads to where more information could be gathered. Many people returning to the town after months or years away came forward with information which will have to be followed up. Although my scanner and laptop stood ready, I only needed to scan one two items, both brought in by an elderly gentleman. He had laboriously written out stories about the town from his youth. Andreas Arendse’s neat handwriting covers three pages of the back of a calendar, and gives an insight into the daily life of this village more than sixty years ago. He also brought along a faded studio portrait of his grandparents.
One of the lessons learned from this first TessFes was that either events and venues have to be centralised, or better signposting has to be arranged. Making use of the tractor and buggy rides as transport between venues has also been suggested. I never did manage to get to the Talent Contests and historical play in the Community Hall up the hill, even further from the centre of the festivities.
The Parade stalls for some reason. Who cares? Nobody, as long as there's noise and colour, everybody gets excited!
It fell to my brother Stephen to arrange trucks for the planned Parade from the Guest House at the other end of the village. Like everything else, it became an exercise in creative compromise – starting with the fact that the farmers in the area are in mid-harvest, so can’t spare the transport. Programme slippage up at the Community Hall also meant that some of the winners couldn’t take their places in the Parade. Eventually we all realised that as long as there was a lot of noise, nobody would mind much that the Parade was incomplete, an hour late, and boasted a home-grown troupe of Drum Majorettes ranging in age from seven to nearly fifty!
Late morning seemed to be the busiest time. Most estimates of attendance place the peak at about six hundred people at once, with the total at over a thousand.
Financially, the TAG committee faced break-even at best, were it not for a generous donation by a local farmer. Sociologically though, the TessFes was a huge success. The villagers are all fired up for next year’s TessFess and some have already started planning to produce goods during the year. No wonder – although their earnings from their stalls are their own business, a straw poll indicates a cash injection of about R30,000 for the town’s non-existent economy.
The day ended with a sing-along and Carols by Candlelight around a bonfire, at which someone recalled a Prophesy made by a Zimbabwean evangelist visiting the town last year. Apparently he predicted that in December 2010 a change of historical magnitude would occur among the people of Tesselaarsdal, but it would be brought about by “outsiders”. Whether the village then went on to prosper would depend entirely upon the people though. Someone else remarked “And just look at us tonight – four Churches around the same fire for the first time in our history. People who haven’t greeted one another in years singing together. We have something to think about…”
This is going to be a fascinating story. I hope you are going to preserve it for future generations to read. If the festival becomes an annual one, some time in the future, people are going to want to know how it all started. I will keep an eye on it for more stories as you progress. Thanks for the interesting record of the events.