throttling my bronchial tubes. Something seems to be burning. Why is Uwe hesitating so long about stopping and opening the bonnet? Doesn’t he smell anything? Maybe it’s due to the pouring rain or the fact that he’s not keen on troubles, having hardly started yet? When he finally opens the bonnet he releases a billowing cloud of grey smoke, instantly taken away by the strong north wind. Half of the lining underneath the bonnet is aglow. Undaunted, Uwe reaches for the water bottle and flushes water at the smouldering engine. It smokes and stinks even more. The second flush hits the engine block, hissing and smoking. When the rising cloud dissolves into the rainy skies, we can see again. The insulation fabric is but a wet stinking rag. With a knife, we cut out the burnt area, in order to prevent this mishap from happening again.
A large construction site hampers access to the next filling station. The workers are busy, in the stormy weather, dressed in tattered clothes, but all wearing the prescribed helmet. Standing protected under the entrance to the cash tills, the site foremen are talking about their activities after knock-off. In between, there is still time to shout orders to the men toiling on the site. Scattered sentences in Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa are exchanged. For today, Friday evening, everybody has his plans. During the weekend there will be partying and everyone knows places with cool women and good vibes.
Another downpour arrives. This much rain is beginning to bring misery to certain areas. If they don’t end soon, the cereals will start rotting on the stalks. The combine harvesters have been standing ready for a long time, in orderly lines. But to be harvested, the crop has to be dry.
The Olifants River is swollen with water, feeding into the Clanwilliam Dam. The dam is filled to the brim, so water is drained through two of the 13 locks. The dam has a capacity of 121.8 million cubic metres of water. With the help of a sophisticated system the vineyards and citrus plantations in the valley get irrigated. There is no lack of water for the fruits so they will surely thrive.
Biltong
The best remedy against tiredness is Coca-Cola. While I go and buy it at the filling station, Uwe disappears into the adjacent butchery, buying biltong. Meanwhile, the sun has started piercing the clouds and the temperatures are rising. This significantly lifts my mood. With the ice-cold cokes in my hands I stand at the locked car. I can hear Uwe’s voice from the shop, mixed with the bell-like laughter of a female voice. On the stairs to the shop sits a big Boer[1], smoking, unshaven for three days, who focuses his eyes on me curiously. His stare is glued to my legs. I give him a friendly greeting in Afrikaans and go past him, up the stairs. His assessing glance rises from my ankles to the hem of my skirt and gets lost somewhere in my long hair. Inside the shop, I am greeted by a radiant smile. Nineteen-year-old Veronica is very beautiful and tall and is fascinatingly proportioned. But, alas, neither time nor funds were invested to get her skew front teeth adjusted during childhood. Veronica is just explaining that, due to the humidity, the biltong cannot get dry and hence cannot be sold now. In fact, like wet cleaning rags on a line, the meat slices are hanging on the wall.
Biltong is a unique delicacy of the South African cuisine. In general, it is made from beef or Ostrich, but can also be made from game like Kudu, Springbok, Eland and Oryx and this variety is a treat. The raw meat is cut along the fibres into inch-wide straps and afterwards rubbed with a spice mixture of coriander, salt, pepper and some vinegar, every South African farmer’s wife keeping her unique secret recipe. Then, the meat strips get hung up to dry, thus losing about half their weight. This only works in very dry air. When the process is complete you can cut off the tiniest slices with a sharp knife. They do it more roughly for official sale, when a chopper cuts it into bite-size pieces.
On the desk there are beautiful pictures of the wild flowers blooming in the Northern Cape. Veronica tells us that the pictures come from her father’s farm, about 300 kilometres from here, close to Garies. Veronica’s father is running this biltong and meat shop to provide for the area and for passing motorists. Beautiful Veronica presents her hands, which are full of cuts and have broken fingernails, and I shudder. What might yet happen to this young woman when she is not attentive enough when handling the sharp butcher knives? Veronica knows exactly what to do on the weekend. She explains that here, up country, there aren’t many options. Young people listen to music, go to the movies and have parties. Veronica opens up during the conversation, full of energy and happy to be able to exercise her few German phrases. After this nice chat we buy blood-orange honey and leave the modest shop. While we are driving away from the yard, Veronica, smoking, steps out of the shop and, shoulders drooping, sits down on the stairs with the big Boer.
The lonely North-West
The diversity of the Namib Desert starts in the Northern Cape. The southernmost fringes of the desert extend from Angola to here where they meet, almost tenderly, in the Karoo. The border of North-West Province is indicated by a big signpost. Huge granite boulders, created by woolsack erosion, grow higher and higher the further we travel. The fields literally are in the pink; red soil showing between the low shrubs and grass stubs. Granite is an intrusive rock composed of quartz, feldspar and mica. The most common form of granite erosion in arid regions is the so-called woolsack erosion. The rock erodes along the criss-crossing fissures through granular exfoliation, producing boulders with the shape of a wool or cotton sack. Big and heavy as they may be, their rounded shapes add an expression of tenderness and harmony to the landscape.
The farm buildings are always quite a distance from the road. Telephone and power lines branch off to the houses, ensuring their inhabitants connect to the outside world. Lacking trees, birds take to these high poles to build their nests. They provide more security to the young brood than the single low quiver trees (Aloe dichotoma pillansii), growing on the hills.
Climbing a quiver tree is not a step too far for a snake. These peculiar trees belong to the aloe family. Simon van der Stel, the first governor of the Cape, called this tree “kokerboom”, since the locals used its hollowed branches as quivers (known in Afrikaans as koker) for their arrows. Once I observed a one metre-long snake invading the nest of a colony of Sociable Weaver birds, thoroughly pillaging it. Since then, I’ve always looked above, before settling under a tree.
The lonely Northern Cape is the largest of the nine South African provinces, with an area of 361.800 km². Only 1.8% of the population, 2.3 inhabitants per km², live here. One of the reasons may be the very scarce rains in this region. The prevailing savannah landscape in the east is taken over by bush and grass steppes towards the west. These merge into the so-called Karoo. In the language of the locals this signified the “land of thirst”. More prosaically, Karoo stands for sediment rocks, which developed 150 to 250 million years ago. The largest part of the region is covered by the barren semi-desert Karoo, where you can expect just 120 to 400 mm of rain a year, or none at all. Only adapted flora and fauna can cope with this harsh climate. Nevertheless, there is a wonderful spell hidden in this barren landscape. Different species of dry grasses survive until the next rains and then turn it into a garden in full bloom. Each year, during the wildflower bloom in the months of August and September, visitors flock in great numbers to the Northern Cape. Along the river beds, which occasionally hold water, different bush-size tamarisks grow, alongside acacias and succulents. The barren areas are increasing because of agricultural grazing and recurrent dry seasons, which hinder the regeneration of the landscape. Forests have been cut down for firewood and timber. The consequence for the fragile semi-desert Karoo has been erosion scars that are beyond repair. Almost imperceptibly the Karoo tapers into the fringes of the Namib Desert, which stretches in a 120 kilometre-wide strip northwest up to the coast. While in the Karoo sheep chew on dry grass tussocks, in the Namib there is no life outside the dry river beds. Some plants and animals who manage to extract vital humidity from nocturnal dew or the coastal fog provide astonishing exceptions and are the real specialists in coping with the harsh living conditions in the desert.
Garies acquired its name from the local Khoisan, and means “creeping grass”, its population is about 1.500. It was founded back in 1845. Not much is going on here,