Going Back to a Place To Be…

November 8^th 2011

Six months away from Boggy Pond! A month or so longer than my worst expectations, but we are grateful for the six-month work “spike” which kept me away. Not a month went by that I didn’t pine for the life here, difficult and uncomfortable as it still is. Whenever I had to go into a Johannesburg shopping mall I found myself slipping into a reality warp, where the glitz, polish and excess of the mall would be replaced by a memory of the functional, unglamorous interior of the SPAR franchise in Caledon. I wished away the excess of the Mall and longed for the small-town SPAR…

Although one cannot completely escape the incompetence, egotism and stupidity of South African politics, nor the prevailing chaos and potential collapse of Western Capitalism, at least the issues in Tesselaarsdal are still on a human scale. FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter and other social networking tools merely paper over the fact that the world has lost touch with the real meaning of Community. When the debt-driven Façade Economies finally collapse, one might as well be in a place where there is virtually no economy and people who have relatively little are on the brink of discovering how to build an economy rooted in Community and sufficiency.

Idealistic? A fantasy? Wishful thinking?

No more so than wishing away the impending socio-political unrest in the Cities when the vast unemployed masses demand delivery on the empty promises uttered by politician with no capacity to do so…

Before leaving in April, I’d arranged for a neighbour of Steve’s to draw up the official plans for the restoration of the house on Boggy Pond. Back in the City, I beavered away at the plans on my CAD programme in between encoding and uploading scores of auditions for international TV series still shooting here – surprisingly, considering the state of the economy. By the time I e-mailed the plans to Gerardt, the work load at his day job had increased to the extent that he felt unable to take the job on, so he generously passed on the plans to a Registered architect in the nearby town of Stanford.

Guy Whittle’s first phone call did my ego no end of good! He said that I didn’t need him – apparently my Matric-level Technical Drawing skills had weathered well after nearly half a century! The problem is though that South Africa is becoming as insanely bureaucratic as Nanny Europe and since the basic structure of the house is clearly older than sixty years – as is almost every other shepherd’s hovel in the area – I would have to navigate the waters of Cape Heritage, alongside some of the grandest old Cape Dutch edifices in the Province.

While I am all for Heritage, I do wonder: Man is what Man is because he is capable of changing – hopefully improving – his environment. That is how we have arrived at what we proudly call Western Civilisation. In this area we have a community which, by a combination of neglect and “Apartheid Oppression” has been left “Disadvantaged”. Amid much talk of uplifting communities, how on earth do we expect communities to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when we place unrealistic bureaucratic obstacles in their paths?

Happily, I can just afford to hire an architect – only just, if he is essentially “retired”, but the “ordinary folk” in the country have a few choices: Firstly, do the right thing and find almost as much money as the materials for the job would cost to go the whole bureaucratic route. Secondly, just break the law and go ahead – add a bathroom to their hovel, hoping that they are considered, essentially, not worth prosecuting, as other “ryk mense” (“Rich People” – i.e. Whites, wealthy or not.) already have been. (That is discriminatory – I thought we’d done away with that? ) The third alternative is to avoid the expense and bureaucracy altogether and do nothing. Live in a leaky, damp, cramped hovel – for want of a few days labour, some bags of cement – and several thousand Rands worth of fees.

This all amounts to a very effective means of trapping people in a physical and mental environment which perpetuates the attitude that they are somehow worth less and unable to change their situation. I call it Oppression by Regulation.

Enough philosophy! (I’m rather prone to it…)

Ever pragmatic, Christa has been trawling the Web for months on the lookout for a bakkie. In June she spotted a Chinese “GWM” apparently in very good condition with low mileage at a very good price. Closer inspection led me to suspect that the vehicle had spent some time unable to clock up distance on the road because it was being repaired after being tail-ended. The clues were a gap of nearly six months in the licensing history, white paint overspray visible on the rubber load bed and a piece of masking tape and newspaper masking left on the mud-flap. Of course, the salesman protested otherwise, but that’s what used-car salesmen do! It was clear that any repairs had been thoroughly done though and it was very affordable, so we pooled our resources and grabbed it.

A last hug before starting the journey... again...

After several changes of schedule, necessitated by wobblies in the budgets of the international producers we work with, the time came to hit the road, our bakkie loaded with left-over and re-cycled timber and IBR roofing sheets from repairs and alterations at home and the Studio.

I spent the whole week-end loading, unloading and re-loading, so I was fairly tired and sore on Monday morning, and only left at about 10h45.

Fairly soon I discovered that the ventilation controls didn’t work – so I drove through the Free State with the cabin temperature reaching 42 Degrees!

By nightfall I had passed Beaufort-West and was not feeling tired at all, so decided to push on. I began to consider driving on through the night – it would save the cost of a stop-over, apart from anything else. The only other traffic on the road was heavy trucks, which were very well-driven and easy to pass when necessary. It became clear that most of them pulled over for the night – I would pass groups of up to twenty of them in lay-byes along the road, like flocks of Pterodactyls, nesting in the primordial blue gloom of a near full moon.

The streamlined load still secure in Laingsburg at 01h00

I reached Laingsburg at 01h00. I realised that I was now committed to driving through – I’m a night-owl anyway, and was not at all tired, especially after a cup of coffee from the all-night garage and a snack from Christa’s hamper.

The only problem I had was in Worcester, where they’ve hidden the turn-off to Villiersdorp! A new overpass is being built, and the alternative route to the R43 is not signposted. Although I remembered the turn-off from last year’s trip, as I left the main road I realised that the arrow had been blanked off. For good reason – that road now led into a brick-paved development of complex-houses! I spent perhaps twenty minutes bucking over speed-bumps on loopy crescents amongst brand new die-cut houses with instant lawns! Eventually I found may back to the main road and doubled back into Worcester town centre, where I asked an elderly pump attendant where they had hidden Villiersdorp! With a pleasant chuckle he agreed to let me in on the secret and provided very clear directions.

Although the mountains were shrouded in night, the moon was bright and clear, appearing to run alongside, sketching the silhouette of the peaks. The moon was so bight and low that when the road turned away from it, I was often startled by the sudden appearance of a headlight behind me, almost on my tail-gate. It wasn’t a crazed motorcyclist, it was the blazing moon!

As I joined the N2 on the short stretch to Caledon I was beginning to feel just a little tired, so I had the window open. I became aware of a slightly dusty, malty smell. I was probably smelling a blend of Canola, Barley and Wheat! Although I saw no lights in the fields nearby, it is harvest time in the area, and I was suddenly joyful – at last, I knew I was in the countryside again!

I trundled through Caledon just after 04h00, noticing that the bumpy main road has been re-surfaced. The 16 Km. of gravel road to Tesselaarsdal is very corrugated after the winter rains though, and made the bakkie rattle in places I didn’t think it had rattles! Perhaps it was because I was no so close to “home”, but fatigue began to increase exponentially. Although I am familiar with the road, my eyes were suddenly refusing to work together as they should, so I slowed right down, trundling up the path to the cabin at about 04h45.

Home at last, 1,400Km away from home!

I had been wondering what I would feel when I arrived. Would the crude simplicity be depressing? Would it feel t0o small, cramped and lonely?

When I switched on the light that I had installed, saw the recycled office carpet, the faded curtains from recycled cloth nearly a century old, the bare planking, the incongruous Kaiser Chiefs tin tea and coffee caddies on plain shelves representing “the kitchen” two steps from the door, the recycled wooden bed, neatly made and very welcome, it all felt just right. Familiar but not boring.

One of the Places that I Am, a place to discover a new way To Be…