Under My Skin-Jukebox The Ghost

Sorry that I seem to be falling behind and getting lazy! Part of it is that I have work building up as the end of the semester approaches (next week is the last week of lectures… I cant believe it!) but I also find that it is harder to write posts about things over time because everything just feels like normal life. I know that it isn’t, though, so I will try to record things before I forget.

This past weekend, I went to Graaff-Reinet, which is a little town in the Karoo (the desert in SA). Grahamstown really is a nice location in that you can drive a little while in any direction and alternately come to the ocean, mountains, grasslands, or even desert. It works out super well if you are constrained to weekend travel by the existence of regular classes.

One of the German exchange students is friends with a guy in his res who lives in Graaff-Reinet, so some of us went home with Egmont, his sister Zanzi, and his friend Freddy. It worked out really well, because Egmont and Zanzi’s mother owns a Bed&Breakfast, and we stayed in one of the guest houses, which she wouldn’t let us pay for. Also, while I am on the subject of hospitality, she had dinner ready for all of us when we got there, and had our kitchen stocked with everything we needed to have a braai Saturday night. It was all fantastic, and so nice to be in a non-dorm with non-dorm food and drinks. Behind our house was a patio with a braai area, a pool, and a bunch of gorgeous plants (also a bunch of cute cats that came and went as they pleased, which made me rather pleased as well). I was warned that the Karoo can get pretty chilly at night, but it was warm enough that we ate dinner outside both nights under the stars, which were gorgeous. Also, I love braais, and more and more I find myself mentally taking notes so I can figure out how to have them when I get home.

Graaff-Reintet was an interesting little town, and the atmosphere was unlike any place I have traveled to while I have been here. First of all, you should know that Rhodes is considered an “English” University, so while there are definitely Afrikaner students here as well as 'English' whites, most white students speak English the majority of the time (Actually, I love to be walking and chatting with Elri when her family calls, and she picks up her phone and starts speaking in Afrikaans). However, Graaff-Reinet is heavily dominated by Afrikaners, and it played a role in historical Afrikaner events such as the Great Trek (if you aren’t familiar with this, the Afrikaans- and English-speaking whites historically didn’t get along, so when British colonizers would try to consolidate their control, Afrikaners would load everything into wagons and travel into the SA interior… sort of like Westward expansion on the Oregon Trail, only minus the trail part). Anyway, the people who live in Graaff-Reinet spoke Afrikaans most of the time I was around them. In fact, Egmont, Zanzi and Freddy spoke Afrikaans a lot of the time unless they were specifically talking to us (aka the Germans: Eva, Britta, and Jens and the Americans: M.E. and I) While the Dutch roots of the Afrikaans language allowed the German-speakers to occasionally understand what people were saying, M.E. and I were lost most of the time—unless Egmont was introducing us to people… the words for “Germans” and “Americans” were pretty obvious cognates.

Speaking of being “The American,” I was told before I left to study abroad to be prepared for anti-American sentiment, but before I came to Graaff-Reinet, I really hadn’t experienced any besides the occasional derisive remark about Bush or U.S. capitalism in class discussions. However, a lot of people I came into contact with last weekend were very… opinionated… about their perceptions of America and Americans. I found that this didn’t bother me nearly as much as it did M.E.—I don’t know if this is because I am less invested in politics in the States, or if it has to do with my loyalties. I suppose I have taken “your citizenship is in heaven” to heart, and my identity as an American is not so important to me as it used to be (Don’t worry, I still am quite fond of the 4^th of July). Anyway, all the ribbing didn’t get to me too much, but it was definitely an interesting experience. Also, Egmont had warned us on our drive there that Graaff-Reinet is still a pretty racist area, and that it is sometimes embarrassing for him when he brings friends home... I promise I will talk about race in SA sometime, but not now.

I must note that Egmont does not exactly have the typical Afrikaner family. His parents are divorced, but they live pretty much directly across the street from each other. His mom runs her B&B, but her real passion is social work, and she was a social worker for years working with the mentally disabled. His dad is a criminal defense lawyer by career, but is a cactus farmer by heart. And his older brother Anton is a Buddhist/hippy sort of guy with a sprawling house (it used to be painted purple, but he told us that he had to make it more respectable when he “grew up” and had kids… the mosaics on the outer walls are still there, though) surrounded by a cactus farm (not as large as his Dad’s) that was complete with a cactus labyrinth leading to a peyote cactus and some mystical crystals. Like I said, not exactly your typical Afrikaner family.

I had so much fun at both cactus farms; I have never seen so many different kinds of cacti in my life. Egmont’s dad has been cultivating his garden for 40 years, and the cacti are huge (well, except for the ones that don’t get big). We got lucky, and a cactus was blooming while we were there that only blooms three days a year… it reminded me of my Mom’s Christmas cactus, except it was bigger (also, we joke that the Christmas cactus at home is actually a Christmas-Easter-Thanksgiving-4^th of July cactus because it blooms so many times. Anyway, this is the one that we saw in his garden…

 Plus another cactus or two...

We also visited New Bethesda  (actually, all of the signs were in Afrikaans and said Nieu Bethesda), a town so tiny that it made Graaff-Reinet look large. While we were there, we visited the Owl House, which was the home of a recluse artist, Helen Martins, who filled her backyard with statues (many were owls, hence the name) as well as creating an interior design scheme in her house that was interesting, to say the least. She lived a tragic life, and I think the townspeople at the time thought she was crazy, but as one of my friends said while we were there, “Better to create all of this than just sit around and be depressed.” While we were in Nieu Bethesda, we also visited a brewery, where I tried honey beer and was sad to discover that it tasted less like honey and more like beer (which I don’t think I will ever develop a taste for).

Sculptures at the Owl House

Something that I am very fond of, though, are national parks, and before we left for Grahamstown on Sunday, we went to the Camdeboo National Park and saw the Valley of Desolation, which is an unusual series of rocky outcroppings formed by various geological processes over a really long time (clearly I am not a geologist, but I still found the view breathtaking).

Our drive home was uneventful (no flash thunderstorms or warthogs chasing each other across the road in front of our car like the drive out), but we did get two see two fantastic rainbows, bringing my physical rainbow count up to 3. I’m afraid the pictures didn’t do them justice, but I have about a million pictures of rocks and cacti to make up for it!