following the intro posted earlier ….
Growing up on a farm in rural South Africa in the 70’s and early 80’s.
Our big draftee farm house on Kia Ora, in Bergville, KwaZulu Natal, was my castle. The busy farm yard always filled with people and animals, the constant action, the veld that we looked out onto and explored during our walking expeditions, the dams that were built over time by the family and in the distance, the beautiful constantly changing but all ways present, majestic, and picturesque Drakensberg mountains with Bergville nestled beneath them. This was my kingdom and I loved it. Driving through to Bergville with the contours of deep pink cosmos during the Easter season and how they would sprout on the side on the road. They are resilient plants and offer such beauty in harsh conditions…. A ray of light on a cloudy day…. Blue heaven on a rainy day…a pretty weed coming up in the paving stones … pointing their faces to the sun and getting things done. Bergville, our local town, has seen many changes over the time. A real farming community. It takes a village to raise a child certainly was true of Bergville. Our tennis coach was a friend of Moms, our Sunday School teacher (on a Wednesday afternoon!) was my aunt…. our teacher was the fiancé of my folk’s bachelor friend…
The tennis club was an integral part of our up-bringing. Every Saturday, tennis would be our choice of sport as a family. When we were little, we always had a nanny in tow to keep an eye on us for the afternoon. When we were younger we would play on the playground for hours, as we grew up we would venture down to the slide at the river and only when we were confident with our tennis, would we join the adults playing matches. Growing up in Bergville had its challenges for me. Imagine trying to shop for frilly tennis knickers for Saturday tennis. I could not figure out why you could not get these in Bergville. The Woods would arrive at tennis at 1:00 sharp, dressed in white, us girls had on the frilly coloured knickers under our short skirts and the matching short coloured tennis socks with the bobbles at the heel to stop them from slidding down into your tackies. Maybe we would be daring and wear a coloured peak. Matching the socks and knickers of course.
My parents only had two reoccurring arguments during our growing years. The first one was over money; usually the lack of it and the second was their different views over sport. Trying your best was a given but attitudes on the outcome varied. My dad was very competitive (unlike me!); while my mother did not have a competitive bone in her body (I take after her). The trouble came when they played mixed doubles together at the local tennis club. My father was ranked number one in Bergville for quite a few years, which of courses added to his god like qualities in my eyes. A few social drinks always followed these sporting Saturday afternoons, and so by the time we got home, mom and dad were always quite jovial. On this occasion, dad was convinced that they should have won the match but my mother was not trying hard enough. At this my mother constantly reminded him about the one winner she hit that went “shoo” down the line. A demonstration followed accompanied with a sound track how fast and accurately she had hit the ball down the line.
As a rule Saturday evening was spent at the Hotel Walter with the Dads in the pub and us kids with Moms enjoying drinks and company on the veranda or hotel grounds. Back in those days there was no ladies bar and the mothers were not allowed in the pub! The first winds of change were when the Hotel Walter built a lady’s bar – The Brigadoon. We must have driven the hotel staff crazy with our running around in the corridors of the hotel. If it was raining, one of the favourite games to play was tok tokkie- the game where you ring the door bell and then run and hide around the corner. We used to follow the waiter around as he played his portable xylophone to announce supper. On clear evening, we would play on the hotel grounds. The best fun was when it was school holidays and the boarding school friend were around. We would play open gates and catches till the parents carried sleepy kids to the cars to start the trek home. When we arrived, we would be given pocket money for the evening to cover any chips, cool drinks, or sweets. There was a café across the road run by “Nick the Greek” and so we would run across the road and take our time making our selection for the night. The streets were dead quiet at that time of night and the street lights lit up the road, our mothers could see all the action from the comfort of their chairs on the veranda. The work force would be brought into town by the big “Asmalls” busses and trundled back out after work, to make sure they were home by curfew. No taxis, no hustle and bustle – how different it is today.
The change of seasons on the farm were distinct, so when we went to school and learnt about the sun moving around the earth, cloud formations etc. this all made sense. The seasons showed us our position in the calendar and what big celebration we could start looking forward to. The summer storms in the afternoons with the thunder, lightning and heavy rains and wind. Sitting like rock rabbits in the sun coming through the windows in the sun room and reading a book meant that it was the long July holidays in the middle of winter and destructive hail storms meant that it was around Christmas / New Year. Exploring the farm after big rain storms was always exciting . We would see the water rushing in streams into the dams, across the roads and through the veld. Making new gully’s or roaring through old ones and inevitably we would pile out of the truck and start doing some earth works and end up having fun in all the mud. The fun of youth! One of these adventures had a purpose however. Dad had built a canal to transfer water from a smaller stock watering dam into the big irrigation dam and we wanted to see this stream in action. Of course, it worked perfectly! Coming home from school and joining dad at the fire-break told us it was the beginning of winter and that dad was securing the farm against run away fires. We would all get involved in stepping the small flames out and doing it in your school uniform with your school shoes and white school socks was much more fun. The eastern boundary of the farm runs along the great Tugela River, and over the years this natural fire break has saved us from fire disasters on many occasions. But with the wind howling, smoke blowing and dust in every nook and cranny, a run-away fire is a very scarey thing. Making you feel very small and insignificant, that at a whim you could spontaneously combust and join the dust swirling outside. I have often thought about what one would save if you had to leave your house at a moments notice. My mother had this on many occasions (the threat – not the disaster luckily) and she always went for her photo albums first. Going as far as to absent mindly put the frames away in a draw.
Our farm house had solid wooden floors throughout and these had been scrubbed clean and washed over the years until they resembled a dehydrated state. It had high ceilings and big rooms. These were all connected with a wide passage that linked the house with the land line telephone at the centre of the house right outside the bathroom door in the centre of the house. This would cause anxious moments when I got any calls from boys, they always phoned (which was certainly not very often) at night. The house was quiet, all had gone to bed, you could hear a pin drop! The bathroom was the only one in the house and housed the bath and the toilet. This was the way it was done in “the olden days” as the plumbing went to the kitchen and so to add a bathroom to a house was easier if the bathroom was next to the kitchen. The bathroom was a big room and housed the toilet, bath, and basin. We had a big towel stand in the corn er that we could hang all our towels on and down the one wall mom eventually got her first and only set of built-in cupboards with a built-in laundry shoot – very smart. In the later years, it was big enough to house the washing machine. Even with all the fittings in the room it was big enough for me to do some jumping exercise and star-jumps before bath! The energy of youth. The window-sills throughout the house were large sash type that were left wide open on the hot summer evenings The house had a wraparound veranda around two sides, one of which was closed in to form the sun-room. The big front veranda was always be the place where the family would meet twice a day for tea. The farm representatives would make their appointments to coincide with these times and join us for tea and business would be discussed while walking to the veranda, but never while we were all together. The question when Greg asked my Dad if he could marry me was also asked on the way to the veranda, but tea was quickly changed for a beer at 8:00 am in the morning. Was this genuine happiness Dad or a big exhale of breath?
The outlook of our home was over a flat lawn (called, ostentatiously, the tennis court) and then through an orchard ending with a clear view of the farm yard and all the farm activities and inner working. We could see my dad coming home at any time of the day. We would run to meet dad and walk the short walk home together chatting all the way home. I do not know if my sister-in-law loves this open plan but their children certainly will!
The physical layout of the farm yard was instrumental to our upbringing. The farm was all encompassing, it was a part of everything we did and everything we thought of doing.
The orchard was very productive with a variety of fruit trees dripping with their bounty. Our best-loved, especially during silkworm season, was the mulberry tree. Mulberry leaves were a favourite food of the lowly silkworm and if feed solely on mulberry leaves, their silk turned a shade of pink. Boxes of silkworms would be carted to school to show your friends, swop, and compare. If you cut out any shape and elevated it in your box and put a silkworm on to it, the silkworm would be trapped on the shape and weave a silk shape that you could swop or use (I still have a heart shaped silk bookmark) There was always something to munch in the orchard on the way to visit dad at the sheds. I can remember piles of vegetable (big white round solid pumpkins) on our front lawn waiting to be counted, loaded, and sold. Nothing was untouchable by farm work and this included our water supply. The house only got water after the dairy parlour had been washed and all the water troughs for the animals were full! My poor mother with four kids and no water! Her shouting “there is no bloody water” was heard on many occasions.
A result of this “open-plan” farm layout was a huge rolling lawn that went right down to the sheds and through the orchard. Mowing the lawn, before the ride on mower of today, was a 3-day affair. No sooner had that all been done and mom fixed all the patches on the extension cord that had been run over and cut, then it was time to start again.
Christmases on Kia Ora were always a noisy and chaotic affair. It would start when mom had returned from Church. All the furniture would be moved onto the veranda so that we could seat 30 odd people in the “fun room” and the mismatched tables would be decorated with crackers, along with all the cutlery and wine glasses hauled out for their yearly appearance. All the Aunts and Uncles and cousins would come plus any older folk that were alone at Christmas. The more the merrier.
The dogs would be put away as the staff with all their kids and wives headed down the hill. The staff children had rehearsed a dance routine and loved to show this off with a ghetto blaster on their shoulder. They would “gitta”, and sing in their best clothes picked out for the day. While they were showing us their moves, sweets would be handed out and all the while my mother would be chatting to the older ladies and putting the family groups together in her head. She also used to meet any new little people that had been born that year and make sense of the crowd. The men staff would sit with my father under the tree and they would share out all the alcohol that my father had for them. They would sit in their circle, take a glug out of the bottle, and then pass it around. Drinking the most and the quickest was the aim – not enjoying a drink with the boss under the tree in the December heat. When all the festivities were over, my father would give his staff a lift back up the hill, home. The children and mothers would walk home via our fruit orchard – filling their packets and pockets as they went.
Even though it was the height of summer in Natal and the fun room was also called the sun room – so it was as hot as Upington – Dad insisted we have a traditional English Christmas meal. Roast turkey, ham, roast potatoes, and veggies followed by Christmas pudding, ice cream and custard. This all in the 40-degree heat, for 30 guests and with a kitchen staff overcome with the Christmas spirit. But mom made it all happen and the toast to absent friends and family was always followed by a happy meal with plenty of laughter.
My primary school years were spent at Bergville Primary. There was an AM (Afrikaans medium) and an EM. The JP years were in the small quadrangle of classrooms, all homely and small and then we went into the SP. A big imposing three level structure built in the government- of- the-day style, face brick, with a large green roof overlooking the sports fields. In hindsight the view is amazing, over the farm fields and onto the Drakensberg, but in those days, who was looking at the view? I was a model student (even if I say so myself), a prefect, library monitor…. all round nice girl. I showed Mitchell (our youngest) the illustrations from my 1983 class prise – “Wind in the Willows”. It felt positively historic – like it should be behind glass in a temperature controlled room. One of the highlights of this time was the vetkoek and pannekoek that the tannies sold at the sports days, not sitting in rows waiting for your race on the hard-dry Bergville fields and getting sun burnt to bits. How things have changed. My kids no longer must sit still and quietly cross legged while waiting for their turn – things are much more free, cuddly, child-friendly…. soft even. Those tannies knew how to cook. I think that is where my love for “festival food” originated. I have now graduated cum laude in the festival food department, and have passed that love… skill even …. down to my children! We could debate for hours the pro’s and con’s of a donut with chocolate or icing …. the best kooksister (they are from Ouma Rooi in Ermelo next to the petrol station!) …. And much much more
A paragraph cannot go by without mentioning my best -friend Bridget. All our primary school days were spent together (and high school days as it goes). We were joined at the hips in Bergville and days together would lead to sleep overs on the weekends. It was always fun and games, but a soon as the sun set and the routines of bathing and supper time started, I always started to get a little homesick. Only once did my mom fall for the night time “rescue” following a frantic phone call, and after that it was put on your big girl panties and suck it up. I do remember that Bridget could watch Dallas (a “late night” tv drama), and she always remembers having to go to bed while the sun was still shinning when she slept over! After high school, we would make a “date” to meet for tea on the veranda of the Hotel Walter which always brought a smile to our faces and happy memories. Bergville is a very different town to when we gew up there in the 70’s and early 80’s. It is the closest town to the rural settlements on the foot of the Drakensberg and services a huge and growing community. There is now a constant hustle and bustle, cars, taxi’s and busses with people going about there business. The Hotel has also changed with the times but it still has the big wide deep veranda that our parents would sit on in the evenings and watch the world go by.
Robyn was also a great friend-and-relation. I spent many happy times with her and her family on the side of a polo field or at their family beach cottage. Her mother was a neat freak and I remember before leaving the beach cottage to head back home, her dad would take the kids to the beach, he always said “if you stand still you may get dusted!”. More like getting out of mom’s hair!
Pink Farm Chick 