Blogs from Betty's Bay

Looking for flowers – finding stone!

namaqualand wild flower tours (2).jpg — Wild flowers of the Northern Cape and Namaqualand in spring – August/September.

We took two days off near the end of August to see the yearly explosion of wild flowers in Namaqualand. With relatively good and early rainfalls in July and August the landscapes above and below would normally have have been spread with carpets of yellow, orange, pink and red wild flowers.

This year however the winter rains came late and too sparingly. The veld was dry, the air biting cold and not a single flower to be seen.

On the road from Nieuwouldtville to Loeriesfontein.

We love being on the road and would not let the no show of flowers dampen our spirits. The Karoo landscape with far away horizons has its own special allure, gently but persuasively pulling you away from the compactness of urban life into a radically different frame of world and time challenging one to soar like an eagle.

The barrenness of this world is part of its allure. The mountain ranges grasp their secret way of having been here from the beginning. You may look into the universe to glance into its depths and see a world as she was made unfolding in front of you.

On our way home good rain had fallen overnight. Soon enough all this will be blanketed in an amazing display of glowing colours.

The town of Loeriesfontein has no outwardly impressing features. A scattering of houses on fair sized plots. But behind there are stories to be told which we want to uncover next year on a more auspiciously flowering trip. Windmills used to be a feature of the Karoo landscape but are becoming increasingly rare and thereby nostalgic – remnants of the so-called good old times now past. Sheep farms are converted to game resorts or areas of fracking for gas without civic consent. The land without sheep or goats will recover significantly given ten, twenty years time, allowing for the re-introduction of game.

A collection of de-commissioned windmill pumps at the Loeriesfontein museum.

The hillscape around Loeriesfontein is populated in parts with quiver trees, indigenous to the winter rainfall desert.

Most specimens showing signs of stress as a result of our present prolonged drought.

We took route R364 back through the Botterkloof and Pakhuis passes where we stopped to pay our respect to the memory of a junior British officer, Lieutenant Graham Vinicombe Winchester Clowes of the Gordon Highlanders who fell here in a skirmish on 31 January 1901, aged 20.

“Devastated by the death, his mother travelled from Hertfordshire to have the gravestone constructed and placed. For many years after Lt. Clowes’s death, his mother would make the five weeks’ journey by sea to the Cape to make the pilgrimage to her son’s grave on the anniversary of his death in the searing heat of the January sun.” (A. Cusack)

“I learned after I stopped at the grave that the soldier’s mother had journeyed all the way from England after the war to find this remote spot and have the memorial erected. Mrs. Clowes would have embarked on a steamship, probably in Southampton, and journeyed over the sea for three weeks to reach Cape Town. Then she would have taken a horse-drawn conveyance such as a Cape cart to the north, a journey of three days through barren spaces filled with peculiar sandstone formations in constantly changing patterns.” (Jenny’s blog Feb 27, 2009)

Our route home skirted the Cederberg mountains.

A popular hiking destination. Leopards have been re-introduced in this area and are carefully monitored.

Dolerite boulders alongside the road. Some of these give off a bell like sound when struck. We tried to “gong” these but to no avail.

“Ancient strike-marks show that Bushmen and Khoi people used them for drumming. Dolerite boulders were also used as ‘canvases’. Some of the planet’s earliest human artistic expression is etched on dolerite, at sites all over the Karoo.” (www.karoospace.co.za)

In the end, flowers we did not find, but we had a wonderful two-day trip up north which we enjoyed a lot.

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With love as always.
Colleen & Walter
Stellenbosch, 3 September 2017

The de-colonization project – a pretty prickly issue

Where to begin?
Colonization is as much a thing of nature as it is of culture and is happening all the while we read and write here. Bacteria colonize organisms. Vikings raid and colonize foreign lands.
Comets are colonized.

In scientific parlance:

DARMSTADT, Germany — For the last two years, the Rosetta spacecraft has danced around a comet. Today, it finally made contact with the icy body — and sent its last signal.

“Comets are primitive cosmic objects, left over from the time our solar system was just starting to take shape 4.6 billion years ago. Exploring the structure, composition and activity of these icy bodies could shed light on the evolution of our solar system, and help scientists write a more comprehensive history of how the building blocks of life were first delivered to Earth.” (www.space.com)

Foreign lands are explored, mapped out and subsequently colonized:

1813_Thomson_Map_of_Africa_-_Geographicus_-_Africa-thomson-1813.jpg — John Thomson’s 1813 map of Africa. (Wikipedia)

“This hand colored map is a steel plate engraving, dating to 1813 by the important English mapmaker John Thomson. It is an early and historically important representation of the continent of Africa. Much of the continent is simply labeled “unknown parts”. Those sections that are known are surprisingly detailed. Caravan routes, temples, and even the distances between Oases are generally noted. Across the center of the continent Thomson details the mythical mountain range known as the “Mountains of the Moon”. The mountains of the moon were first postulated by Ptolemy to be the source of the Nile. This mysterious range remained on maps until the mid 19th century explorations of Burton, Speke, and Livingstone.” (Wikipedia)

Is colonization part of an regenerative process of shaking up existing states of things for their own good?

Is it, seen from the angle of the colonizer, an act of exploration only with the aim to gain knowledge about unknown parts of the world and universe? Or is it in any event a violent, destructive, rapacious intrusion of a well established natural or cultural realm for the intruder’s good?

Can it ever, from the angle of the colonized, be seen as an impulse to cultural renewal, testing the strength of defenses and developing capabilities to defend itself, absorb and digest?

Colonization is a good thing, of course. It means making the land and its people productive. Developing natural and cultural resources.

Colonialism however is not a good thing. It means the imposition of a foreign rule and exploitation of natural and human resources which can never be condoned.

To say colonialism was not all bad, it brought infrastructure etc. is tantamount to saying Hitler was not all bad, he built the Autobahn. Sorry Helen, this was, if not a calculated provocation definitely an unfortunate glitch.

Where to begin then with the project of decolonization?

Here are a few propositions what to do and not to do.

Do not tear down statues of classical colonizers.
They are to be kept as reminders of the people’s history.
To besmirch and pull down the statue of Cecil Rhodes is infantile.
Research and uncover knowledge disregarded by the colonizers.
This might cover medicinal practices but also ways of looking at the sky and interpreting ways of being in this world.
Look at the difference between colonization and colonialism and separate the wheat from the husks. As much as colonialism is to be condemned, colonization has a lot to offer. This is where Helen got it wrong.
Empower all who are vulnerable, that is, all of us.
Try to dislodge the new colonizers, that is those in power who have usurped the position of the colonizers of old and are raping the country as of old.

The pricklyness of the de-colonization project lies in that the virus has disguised itself and has usurped the position of old under the mantle of liberation.
What are we to do?
What were the people of northern France and England to do when they were raided by Viking mobs?
They had to endure and bury their slain.
What are the Syrians to do in the enclaves of Mosul? They have to endure and bury their dead.
And South Africans? What are they to do to get rid of their new colonizers under the disguise of liberators?

We all are in a pickle. Attacked by all kinds of new challenges. To de-colonize is one of the least exciting issues. Let’s attend to the agenda of renewed colonial invasions in the guise of new forms of energy: fracking the Karoo to smithereens and Russian power plants dotted all over the country – the new colonial masters having been handsomely paid for their acquiescence already.

With love from
Walter & Colleen
Stellenbosch 5 April 2017

Caperitif – a Cape revival

Ideas are born out of desires to change the world. Not necessarily to improve it, since you cannot really improve it – it runs as it runs – as good as it comes – but to bring something new or the forgotten old into it again. To add style, comfort, chic …

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Ideas rise from early morning heaviness of sleep – when night fades out and light of day has not quite come – and are imbued with dreamscape stuff of earth and honeyed dust.

dsc_0079-214 — At *Kalmoesfontein* in the Swartland district of the Western Cape, home of the Badenhorst wine making family and place of the official “Caperitif” launch.

The idea was to resurrect an old product – Caperitif – a Vermouth type aperitif which had been produced at the Cape of Good Hope early in the twentieth century.

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The reception. At the Badenhorst’s farm in the Swartland district of the Western Cape.In the middle background Cornelia Badenhorst.

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The presentation.
Adi Badenhorst, rebellious winemaker and Dave Hughes, well-loved, witty, widely respected booze expert.

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The address.
Dave giving a jolly if not somewhat quirky historical overview over the Cape drinking landscape.

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The proclamation.
Wim Tijmens – profound botanist and irrepressible raconteur.

The product. Instead of the original “Vermoed” now “Kaapse dief” a vermouth with a preponderance of Cape *fynbos.*

The mixing, with a great splashy indulgence.

There it is – the Cape classic ingredient to a variety of cocktails.

The jolly crowd.

Adi Badenhost … man with entrepreneurial enthusiasm ….

… Lars Erik Lyndgaard Schmidt who thought it all up and had the vision …

… and someone who couldn’t give a hoot about the fuss.

Thank you, Lars, for inviting us. We thoroughly enjoyed the presentation.

With love as always
from
Colleen & Walter
Stellenbosch, 08 March 2017

Into the New Year

Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516), *Ship of Fools*, fragment of a triptych. Musée de Louvre, Paris.

Dear friends,

Contemplating The Ship of Fools could well serve to alert us to the follies in our own lives if not the world at large at a time when all our good New Year’s resolutions have dulled away.
Bosch’s work speaks to us as freshly as it must have moved people at the turn of the 15th into the 16th century. People then stood with their minds and habits, thoughts, rituals, beliefs, expectations and realisations of life half still enslaved within the feudality of the Middle Ages and halfway into the era of modernity which is our own.

The ship of fools is very much alive in our time, adrift on the ocean of general intemperance, fanaticism, pernicious and evil intents, little fat clowns playing with intercontinental ballistic toys while watching the latest massacres and drownings in high definition.

We all know or feel that our world has come to an end in its present form and that the process of major reforms has already begun. These adjustments will be painful for all of us, in particular the ruling parties, and will invariably be met with subterfuge to derail the process of change.

There is no time for turning back. The time has arrived to be bold and brave. To fight the good fight where it counts: on the battlefield of personal commitment, never giving up on the dream of creating a world for all to thrive in.

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It is a fight worth fighting.

With love to all of you from
Colleen and Walter
Stellenbosch, 10 January 2017

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Cape Town’s Waterfront on a sunny winter’s morning

xxx — The Waterfront in Cape Town is a working and truly walkable harbour.

DSC_9176-58 — The ferry to the once infamous, now famous island.

DSC_9170-54 — Another more powerful tug.

DSC_9182-64 — A relatively recent addition to the entertaining elements with Table Mountain as a backdrop.

DSC_9185-67 — Heroes of the struggle, crowded out.

DSC_9237-119 — Nobel Square – the bronze statues of the four South African Nobel Peace Price recipients (from left to right): Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela.

Albert Luthuli (1898-1967) President-General of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1952-1967. He was awarded the 1960 Nobel Peace Price “for his fight against racial discrimination”. Luthuli House – the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg – is named after him. – Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu (born in 1931) received the Nobel Peace Price in 1984 for his “role as a unifying leader figure in the campaign to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa”. – F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela both received the Nobel Peace Price jointly in 1993 “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa”.

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Tutu – a representation of His Grace Anglican Archbishop emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu. A man without fear and with numerous honours bestowed on him, he too has raised his compelling voice against corruption and licentious spending of public funds by government officials.

DSC_9188-70 — In the Watershed – a new home for African craft, art and design. – Spinning and knitting. The winters are cold enough in South Africa to make woollen garments highly desirable. South African wool and Mohair is of a supreme quality and now Alpacas have been introduced and are flourishing, almost as sumptuous as cashmere.

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Satirizing colonial officials or expression of new class consciousness? There is always a kind of humourous ironical smugness present in these figurines.

DSC_9201-83 — Ardmore ceramics in KwaZulu Natal have opened a whole new world of elaborate and decorative ceramic crafts popping up everywhere.

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DSC_9210-92 — Elaborate jewellery is traditional and creates real treasures using, over and above glass beads, fibres of all kinds and wire work, creating rich embellishments.

DSC_9214-96 — A jolly little steam train …

DSC_9215-97 — … doing tours all all around the Waterfront.

DSC_9270-152 — Music, formal and informal, ethno bongo, Jazz and vocal …

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… buskers and concerts, it’s all here.

DSC_9261-142 — Jazz and Cape Town are synonymous – the talent overflows.

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“Tavern of the Seas”, Cape of Storms, now a place of real Good Hope, this waterfront development has elevated Cape Town from being a large town to a cosmopolitan city on a manageable scale.

With best greetings as always from
Colleen & Walter

Stellenbosch, Sunday 12 June 2016

Autumn equinox in the Karoo – exploring remains of ancient Quena cosmology in Southern Africa

Portrait of a Quena/Ottentotou/Hottentot/KhoiSan woman by Samuel Daniell (1775-18811)

Saturday 19th March 2016 we gather at a basic farmhouse in a part of the Karoo called Moordenaars Karoo and after being briefed about the route for the afternoon we head into the field. The plan is to experience a point in the universe or cosmos where, seen from earth in the direction of a setting and a rising sun, night and day will be equally long, after which the southern hemisphere will go into autumn and winter mode while the northern half will experience the first signs of spring and summer returning. Going back two thousand or more years in history, how and why were people here interested in such a phenomenon and how would they have known when this point in earth and cosmological time had arrived and how and where to observe and possibly celebrate it.

First heap of stones.

If you think these are just a few stone scattered in the veld, you have not yet developed an eye for the purposefulness of these scatterings. There is, for the trained eye, among the stones an arrow pointing to cleft in the distant mountain range. This indicates and arrowhead, pointing 28.5 degrees southwest, to a V-shape gap in a distant mountain, where the sun sets at the summer solstice.

xxx — Another group of stones, pointing to another distant mountain top.

A rough 4×4 ride brings us to this dry riverbed where Marius introduces his father and scientific leader of our expedition: Dr Cyril Hromnik who’s politically challenging research into and publications about ancient Africa have met with sharp criticism from his academic peers. He for instance points out that the golden rhino from a burial site at Mapungubwe is not of African but Indian origin.

xxx — An Indian rhinoceros with one horn only. (Photo provided by Sian Tiley-Nel, Manager & Chief Curator, University of Pretoria. Wikimedia)

We are now investigating a river front cave entrance where the walls are strewn with faintly visible images of tall figures, an eland, imprints of hands with one finger missing and clusters of red dots. All these representations would according to popular belief have been done by Bushmen or San people. Cyril Hromnik explains these as referring to ceremonial aspects of ancient Indian customs. You can imagine our surprise and disbelief because we are by now so well conditioned to think Bushmen/ San/ Kung! are the people who created these images. There is, of course no final proof of their originators or what true significance these images have.

xxx — The representations here were, according to Dr Hromnik, not done by “Bushmen” as academics would have it, but by Quena people, who were influenced by contact with Indian gold and ivory traders.

From here we drive on and then walk up a hill side along a dry packed wall which looks like a fence but is in fact part of a cosmologically significant demarcation.

xxxx — This 72m long wall has basically 3 main functions: 1. Its northern end in connection with the Brandberg mountain and the stone Seat navigates you towards the rising of the Moon at the Moon Major Standstill Rising — once in 18.6 years. 2. The gap in the wall (not in the middle) gives you the Equinox Sunrise. 3. The length of the Wall gives the time within which the Full Moon switches the sides: from South in Summer to North in Winter and vice versa (source: Cyril Hromnik).

xxx — This 72m long wall has basically 3 main functions: 1. Its northern end in connection with the Brandberg mountain and the stone Seat navigates you towards the rising of the Moon at the Moon Major Standstill Rising — once in 18.6 years. 2. The gap in the wall (not in the middle) gives you the Equinox Sunrise. 3. The length of the Wall gives the time within which the Full Moon switches the sides: from South in Summer to North in Winter and vice versa (source: Cyril Hromnik).

The stone seat from where to observe the rising moon at the Moon Major Standstill Rising which happens once in 18,6 years. – The celestial event of the Moon Minor Standstill was observed by Dr Hromnik’s group in the Moordenaars Karoo on the night of last Tuesday the 26th of April 2016. This celestial event occurs also only once in 18.6 years.

Quena – according to Dr Hromnik’s research, presently disputed in main stream archaeology, a dravidian Indian word meaning “mixed people” connected to the trade of gold and ivory from Westafrica to India, a mix of Indian and indigenous bushmen origin, called Hottentots by early European travellers and subsequent settlers and today referred to as KhoiSan.

xxx — Sunset at autumn equinox in the Karoo.

xxx — An oil lamp hollow to signal events to people on the opposite mountain side.

xxx — Sunrise at the autumn equinox between two upright markers.

xxx — Another temple site connected to the autumn equinox.

Two parallel walls demarcating a corridor for celestial observations.

xxx — Structure from a recent age: a Voortrekker bread oven.

xxx — The temple mound from where the chosen souls may take their final way to the celestial North.

Bringing it all together.

Cyril maintains the dead were burned here according to Indian tradition. To the left in the river bed a perennial spring feeds into the river.

DSC_8672-122 — Karoo landscape near Laingsburg/Western Cape/South Africa.

This two-day exploration opened our eyes to things in the landscape which are normally dismissed as cattle kraals or similar earth-bound mundane objects.
Who would think of celestial clocks laid out in the Karoo two thousand years ago?
The fascinating aspect of this exploration is that you need no archeological diggings to look into the past – it is all there in front of your feet. All you have to do is open your eyes to the celestial connections in the night sky for it to fall into place.
The obstacles are as always, in the mind. This exploration opened our minds under the patient guidance of our tutor Dr Hromnik.

We should not be surprised to hear that he is called a maverick scientist.

The Curse of Racism

On the Wild Coast, near Port St. John’s, on our way to Lusikisiki and beyond.

We belong to the human race.
The classification of humans according to essentially distinguishable traits is part of 19th century anthropology, subsequently throughout the 20th century, exploited as a political tool.
Behaviour among the human race that today still uses such classification openly or in subtle ways, is justifiably branded “racist”.
When and where the term “racism” is used today, the usage can be ambivalent and controversial: it could mark behaviour as racist, but it could also be used as a political instrument to disqualify certain behaviour even though it may not be racist at all.
There is the dichotomy: the ones shouting “racism” might well be racist themselves.
Where then is the qualifier?
“Race” as qualifier is a thing of the past.
“Race” is as qualifier in academic analytical writing.
“Race” as a behavioural qualifier has no place in everyday interaction between members of the human race.
While racism is still very much alive like other diseases of the past, we should refrain from its usage because if used it easily can turn into the curse it is.

Magueye, Professor of German Language and Literature in Senegal. Here with Walter in our library in Stellenbosch, some years ago.

Writing about racism is virtually impossible. There are simply too many open wounds. It’s an emotional mine field. The recent verbal flair up is so very telling. It’s like an AK-47 – once you pick it up you might want to use it.

With love from
Colleen & Walter
Sunday 07 Feb 2016
On the day of the South African Catholic feast of “Our Lady of The Flight into Egypt”.

Happy days – happy souls

The “Burgerhuis” in Stellenbosch on a Sunday morning.

A happy soul on Sunday morning in the week before Christmas, unexpectedly behind the walls of the “Burgerhuis”, inviting me to join her which I politely declined but accepting the permission to photograph her. She did not appear to be homeless, maybe resting for the night on her way home.

Another happy lot on the same Sunday morning in the grounds of the “Burgerhuis”. They do not have homes but they are burgers nonetheless – are they not?!

Looking for another perspective of the “Kruithuis” (arsenal) I stumbled upon this happy lot with apologies for my trespassing. They happily obliged.

What are happy days?
Days of lightness are happy days.
Lightness of colour in your heart.
Evenweightedness in feel,
of mind and will.

Watching the moon, at dawn, solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely: no part left out. (Shikibu)*

May your 2016 bring you many happy days of summer clouds and fairy ways.

With love as always
from
Colleen & Walter
Stellenbosch, Sunday 3 January 2016

*Epiphany. In: Catholic Link. Epiphany of the Lord, 3 January 2016

A Sunday afternoon stroll in Hout Bay Harbour

A visit to Hout Bay harbour is always a worthwhile diversion, especially on a Sunday afternoon. Watching people walking leisurely along the harbour mole gives one a feeling of being at peace with the world.

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A myriad of ways – seemingly at rest.

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Red yellow green at the end of the harbour mole.

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Freshly painted for the new season.

DSC_7541-67 — Tightly packed during a weekend’s reprieve.

DSC_7534-60 Easy surf and safe beach.

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The stroll home.

A day in the sun, among like-minded people.
Letting the day slow down to a quieter pace.
Let us be here for now,
outside time for a while.

Stellenbosch, 25 November 2015

With love as always from
Colleen & Walter