Chapter 9. Visitations

Yes it does snow in Africa!

Visitors came and went under many guises. We had no sign-posts showing the way to Bulklip. We felt that if someone needed to get hold of us urgently enough, they would either phone first for directions, or ask at the neighbouring farm. We didn't want to advertise our presence at this isolated farmhouse at the end of the track, and as a rule, most people found us without too much of a detour. On only one occasion when celebrating a special birthday at the farm did we put up sign-boards to help our guests. We were still putting the finishing touches to the marquee and the food when a car drew up in the garden, from which alighted an earnest young couple with a very wispy little girl who wore a straw hat and carried a bible. We had only put the signs up half an hour earlier and the Jehovah Witnesses had tracked us down! Sadly we had to send them on their way with not a single convert to reward them for their long hot drive out into the countryside, but I did manage to slip a piece of birthday cake to the little girl who looked woefully underfed.

Very popular visitors were Oom (Uncle) Koosie and his grandson Kobus. They were part of the Labuschagne family who were our delightful neighbours from whom we had bought Bulklip and who had a lovely family of three daughters and a long awaited son. By the time we arrived on the farm, Kobus was a ten year-old live-wire with all the delightful attributes of any other unspoiled country lad. He hated school because they made him wear shoes, and he was always having difficulty deciding which of his two girlfriends he liked the best.

Despite his limited English and my halting Afrikaans, we became great friends and he was intrigued with John and I who had arrived from what to him must have seemed like another planet. In no time he was collecting English stamps and asking John about the delights of the French Revolution. I think the guillotine sounded as though it had remarkable potential for those who stole his dinky toys or made him stay in late after school.

His grandfather Koosie lived with the family and the two of them would arrive in high style in Koosie’s ancient vehicle with headlights flashing and hooter blaring. On first seeing the battered old car coming down the driveway, we thought that no-one was driving, until we realised that Kobus was sitting in the drivers seat on a cushion barely able to see over the steering wheel while his grandfather operated the pedals for him. Hugely pleased with themselves, they would negotiate seven farm gates, often with the help of a little African boy who was Kobus's pal, and they would sweep into the garden grinning from ear to ear.

The little African boy ‘Seun’ would never get out of the car lest he be devoured by Mr Dumpy or trampled by Bokkie and on the one occasion when Kobus did lure him out, he spent the entire visit sitting on the upper branch of the gum tree next to the farmhouse from where he watched every move that the tethered Mr Dumpy made, and we had to climb up to take his orange juice and biscuits to him.

Oom Koosie would settle back into the old armchair on the veranda from where he could see across the huge garden and up to the Bulklip rock, and he would regale us with tales of the old days. It was said that down in Zastron there were no fewer than fifty widows, all of whom he was on first name terms with, and most of whom were invited to his eightieth birthday party. He took the cowards way out and asked me to sit next to him which resulted in me having a hilariously entertaining lunch while trying to avoid the daggers being shot at me. Even in his khaki shirt and trousers and old farm hat, Oom Koosie still presented a picture of a handsome neat gentleman farmer, and to see him suited and booted for church on a Sunday was reminiscent of the glory days of Hollywood. He was a wise educated man who, despite having been born at a time when the country was still riven with the enmities created by the Boer War, insisted that his children and grandchildren learn to speak English and he encouraged them to communicate with us as much as possible.

The family was to meet with tragedy a few years after we move to the farm. Hennie, the son of Oom Koosie, who at this time was in the prime of his life and aged about forty five, was out riding his horse on a blazing hot summers day. His dogs ran alongside as he toured his adjoining farm, checking on the cattle and the sheep and ensuring that troughs had enough water and that salt licks were in place. Moving through the veldt at a brisk pace, suddenly, without warning, his horse stepped in a rabbit hole and Hennie was pitched forwards, landing on his back on the sun-baked ground. The horse caught fright and ran off but his dogs stayed loyally at his side, whimpering and nudging at him. The hours passed and the sun beat down on him, dehydrating and burning him and it was lunchtime before his wife, already concerned that he had not appeared, received a radio message that the horse had appeared riderless at a neighbouring farm. A search party went out and the barking of the dogs led them to Hennie who was in desperate straits by this time.

The frantic ringing of the party line alerted us to the fact that there was something terribly wrong, and the next thing we saw was the ambulance from town heading out towards ‘Champagne’ farm. Hennie had severed his spinal cord in the fall and lost the use of his legs. From being a man who rode a horse as though they were one, he was confined to a wheelchair and left paralysed from the chest down.

The first few days were spent re-hydrating him and dealing with the sun-burn that had scorched him as he lay face up unable to move and gradually the horror of the situation began to dawn on everyone; Hennie would never walk again. Not only did the family rally round but the entire community did whatever it could. Hennie was a man of immense character and determination, and before the year was out, he was driving himself into town in a specially customised truck, and with the aid of a wheelchair, he continued to run his farms and keep his family as the tightly knit loving unit that it had always been. Whenever we felt that our burdens were too heavy, we would think of Hennie and thank the good Lord for our health and strength.

I so admired this family and the structures that made it what it was. Even at an early age, young Kobus had a natural fierce love for his land and his people and a clear knowledge that he should defer to his elders in all matters until he was old enough to take up the reins. Unlike my children who held British passports and had strong links with England, and who could go out into the world as they chose, Hennie's children would find it hard to leave for greener pastures whatever the future held for their country. Whenever I hear anyone being derogatory about the Afrikaaners, I think of this educated charming friendly family who welcomed us into their lives and who gave so freely of their knowledge and time, and I am proud and happy to have known them.

Another welcome visitor was the lady who ran the mobile health clinic. Every month or so, she and her African nurse would visit the farms in the district, and the staff would congregate and be inspected one by one. New babies would be weighed and the toddlers would be injected against measles, mumps and whooping cough; young nubile girls were issued with birth control pills and the hormonally over-active young men were handed packs of condoms with strict instructions to use them. Everyone received a stern lecture on the dangers of Aids and then it was time for the farmer’s wife to issue a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits to the nursing staff and be entertained with the gossip from the surrounding area.

We learned very quickly that if one was in receipt of news, then one was expected to provide a certain amount to be carried forth to the next port of call. I came up with the clever notion of having batches of photos of my mothers' garden in England ready for viewing, and her horticultural prowess became a safe topic of conversation, which turned ‘Sister Marie’s’ attention away from the more enthusiastic grilling concerning our past, present and future.

We enjoyed the visits paid to us by guests who had come to see the tribal art collection. It became known in the district that the museum was now open and quite often a phone call would announce the imminent arrival of someone being brought out to view the pieces. For me it was an occasion to get out the best china and whip up a batch of scones, and invariably the visit would develop into a scramble up the Bulklip rock to see the Bushman paintings and then a hike up to the top of ‘Table Mountain’ to see the view.

This particular peak on the farm had gained its’ name from the battered wooden cable drum that we had hauled up there. We set it up and surrounded it with four wooden tree stumps, and from that comfortable viewpoint, we could relax with a chilled bottle of wine and watch the day sink into evening. Alternatively, we could race up there and see from which direction the smoke was coming from in the event of a veldt fire, or by using binoculars, spot a group of young calves that had decided to take themselves off on an extra curricular outing.

It didn’t matter in which direction you faced, there was a magnificent view laid out. To the north-west one mountain in particular stood out. During the mid 1800’s at the time of King Moshoeshoe the founding father of Lesotho, while the struggle for land went on between white settlers and black wandering tribes, it was up into the fastness of Vegkop mountain that a rebel chief led his band of stock thieves and a vast number of looted animals. Flat on top with plenty of dew ponds and room for habitation, the mountain was virtually impenetrable except by means of a steep climb up through a gap in the rock face that surrounded the mountain like a stone necklace.

Early one winters morning, a commando of local soldiers and farmers had crept up the lower slopes under cover of darkness, and as the sun tipped the upper reaches, they managed to fight their way up on to the top. Panic spread among the tribesmen now trapped but their resident witch-doctor had a plan. Assuring them that the mixture with which he had daubed them would make them not only bullet proof, but would give them the ability to fly, he encouraged them to fling themselves over the edge, and this a great number did. Needless to say, whatever mixture he had used was not strong enough, and the broken bodies of many of them lay on the rocks below. Sadly the records show that no prisoners were taken that day despite the presence of a large number of women and children, but a huge number of cattle, sheep and horses were reclaimed and driven back down the mountain.

Later on at the turn of the century, Vegkop was used as a rallying point when the Boer commandos gathered, prior to their big push to try and force the British back to the Cape. However, the action was unsuccessful, largely due to the fact that so many farmers had to leave the Boer ranks in order to return to their farms in the district that were now being razed to the ground during the scorched earth policy. Returning to the agony of dead and dying animals and barns ablaze, they would find that their women folk and children had been rounded up and taken to the internment camps in Bloemfontein and Thaba Nchu, where so many of them were to die from malnutrition and sickness.

They were unhappy times for this part of the world, and it was small wonder that the few English that had settled there were looked upon as ‘Uitlanders’ (foreigners) despite the number of years that they had wrestled with the elements alongside their Afrikaans neighbours. Another interesting geographic phenomena that we could see clearly from ‘Table Mountain’ was a long narrow fault line running from the base of our farm away into the distance towards Kimberley. ‘It’s a diamond pipe’ we were always told, but sadly, although there had proved to be a wealth of stones at the Kimberley end, we never saw so much as a glint at our end. I think we had more chance of uncovering the pot of gold at the base of the rainbow that so often arched over the Bulklip rock.