Monday 16th December 2013
Five and a half months since my last visit, and this won’t be a long stay. In truth, I’ve spent the week-end with Steve, across town, since I have not replaced the appliances stolen earlier this year.
In previous years I would be looking forward to at least a month in the cabin, while the outside world indulged in the annual spending ritual previously known as Christmas. I’ve managed to escape that bruising ritual for three years, but it has meant being away from Christa for too long.
The main road through the town was washed away
The “big story” in the village is the flood that swept through here in mid November. Over 240 mm was recorded in one night. The sandy ground was already waterlogged by late winter rain, so almost all of the new water headed straight downhill, often taking trees and minor flood-defences with it.
The deep channel dug to protect the housing development was barely adequate, and also had the effect of channelling a lot of water down my Western border. The deluge overwhelmed recently installed concrete culverts and simply tossed them into a deep gorge, cutting Boggy Pond and Juffrou Smal off from the village.
Two trees have disappeared from the turn-off to the cabin, and the old road up the middle of the property has become a “donga” of note, completely exposing the water supply to the old house and the cabin.
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My efforts at rehabilitating the top dam have been wiped out completely. So much sand was carried from the farm up the mountain, that my dam is now completely silted up, and Boggy Pond itself is about a quarter full of sand, but very little water.
The water filtering plant is barely twenty metres from the left edge of picture.
The village water-works had a narrow escape. Water is piped down from higher up the valley for processing on the edge of the town, fortunately well away from the gulley which continues past the town. In one night, a new canyon was eroded, leaving a five metre waterfall where it had been an easy skip across to the other side.
Rock and sand from this canyon below the new waterfall took away the bridge on the main road
Just as much ground has shifted in the village, metaphorically speaking the ground has shifted beneath my life during the past year. I took on Boggy Pond as an escape from mounting unease and unhappiness with life in Gauteng. The move to the Cape has changed that, and the world we work in has also changed.
Ironically, I was only able to spend as much time at Boggy Pond because our stream of work was barely “adequate”. The move to Cape Town has brought a flood of work, and the need to re-assess priorities. The world-wide economic crisis has increased pressure on budgets and shortened pre-production time, which means we work extremely long days, often into the week-end. By the end of a week, I simply don’t have the energy to fight traffic for two hours for the sake of two days making very little progress at Boggy Pond. I supose I was being idealistic, and certainly unrealistic, to think that I could build an alternative lifestyle out here. On a practical level, it is just not financially sustainable. On a personal level, it doesn’t appeal to Christa, and I don’t want to do it without her… she is too precious to me. The enforced separation as a result of the move has not been easy for either of us. We’re going to have to re-assess Boggy Pond’s part in a new future – if it has a part at all.