Karoo Moment

I am currently sitting in a stop-and-go in the middle of the Karoo. Having spent the last week chasing around at full capacity in preparation for two shows back to back, Innibos in Nelspruit and a Gem exhibition in Menlyn in Pretoria, it’s quite a relief to just sit and be driven across the country!

I’m not completely off-hire (a term my civil engineer father uses to denote chill out time), with a lap full of gemstone beads, I intend to catch up on beading all the way from Plettenberg Bay to Gauteng.

Another task I have set for myself is to create a sensory collage for you, see if I can place you squarely in my seat in this vast expanse of land where, if you listen, in between the sparse birdsong and back to back heaving of 

Van Schalkwyk’s Vervoer trucks, you can hear the ghostly whisper of the slow steady role of voortrekkers’ ossewaens crunch their heritage into the hot Karoo ground. You can hear them loud and clear in town names like Vergenoeg (far enough), Moetverloor (given up will), Goliatskraal (as in Goliath), Agtertang (um… pliers in the back/derogatory name for someone on the opposite side of the tracks!).

 We careen past these places to a Sunday soundtrack of Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and something I can only describe as Baltic-dub-step-maybe! The sharp morning sun casts pink shadows underneath pink tourmaline beads in the tray before me and slowly thaws my frosty Garden Route hands! The everlasting highlight on the steel barrier along the N10 races us to Graaff-Reinet. I can almost hear it singing on the steel. Secretary birds, monkeys, baboons, meerkats watch. 

It’s so very open here, we are so very outnumbered by sky and clouds and succulents and space. I’m picking tomatoes big-time! Inside our moving cocoon its popcorn and home-made lentils burgers and Audio books and Onion, the hamster, charging around like an excited country mouse on her way to the big city! Makes the prospect of spending the next ten hours in a car all the more bearable!

Gauteng here we come!