One wedding and a funeral

Very sadly for the Van Zyle clan, they lost their 88 year old Mum last week and we were invited to the funeral. Quite aside from it being an incredibly sad occasion it was a great eye opener into the culture of the people around here.

Around 200 people packed the tiny church [first time I have set foot across the threshold]. The ages ranged from ancients who were wheeled in in chairs to the very young. There were many families with small children there, who sat rigid and quiet and appeared to be taking in every word of the service.
The Kirk is quite fearsome in its austerity.With whitewashed walls and a few strategically hung tapestries encased in glass, shrieking silent orders at the congregation, in capitalised Africans.

As the temperature was approaching 40 degrees outside and there was no air co inside ,Bossy and I soon found ourselves melting into the pews..it was difficult to concentrate as the address was being made in high Africans, and I felt unable to use the service order to fan my face for fear of drawing attention.
Bossy and I had dressed so that we would camouflage..very understated, as there were many there that frowned on "infidels" even attending to show their respect, but Niki and Magda were insistent upon our presence.
At one point I was aware of the Reverend directing his comments towards us,and people staring from under their eyebrows at us. After a suitable pause Bossy whispered that we had just been highlighted as foreigners who had turned their backs on the Good Lord....Nice.
By this stage we had sweat pouring down our faces, necks backs...the only comfort was that the rest of the congregation seemed in a similar position and we hadn't been singled out for the treatment..either by the Reverend or a greater force!

To my amazement we went to the burial.
The burial ground is a drive away from the church and is surrounded by vineyards on a large plot of flat sand. This burial ground is for "whites only" which was the first rather shocking realisation. When I looked around the graveyard , I realised that no expense had been spared on any of the headstones and very grand mausoleum type, family structures. In such stark surroundings it all seemed rather incongruous.

There was a mechanical coffin lowering device that was encased in plush velvet and had plenty of shiny golden bits of scaffolding under it to support the coffin..and as it rather spookily lowered itself into the cement lined hole in the sandy earth, a choir of workers from Niki's farm started the most baleful rendition in a range of different harmonies. It was incredibly moving but also quite strange..watching the biggest most flashy coffin being lowered into the desert sands accompanied by the strains of pure African voices singing a rhythmic tribal lament.

All very sad as you can imagine.
I was aware of the great bond of "Community" with these farm people..they support each other to the hilt through life`s tragedies and joys, and the church is the centre pin upon which they are anchored.

Despite Niki and Magda`s insistence on our being there....never more have I felt like such and outsider and despite empathising hugely with the families grief, I came away feeling that even in death there is a vast chasm between those who "Have" and those who "have not".

Sorry to end on such a maudlin note..but the next story may cheer you.


AUTHONOMY

As you know I am enjoying the upward trajectory of ARK on Authonomy.
There is a forum on the site, for the writers to discuss writing issues and swap hints. Bitch about each others work and wail that their book is not moving "up the charts".
On this forum someone has started "the longest ever poem by the largest number of people" thread.

Now having always dabbled in a little poetry writing myself, I decided to go and have a look and see what it was like..well it rather caught my attention, and after the first cautious stanzas..I have become a "regular"contributor. The person who started the thread emailed me and thanked me for my valuable contributions and explained that they were away for several days and would I "look after" the thread and make sure that I didn't let it fizzle out. " Of course I will" I replied.

My problem is that the prose seems to keep falling into the dour and miserable rather too readily,and after towing the line for the past several weeks I have begun to tire of all the misery. A fellow authonmite clearly felt the same, and lifted the Longest poem by writing about dragonfly's.

Since the idea is to be inspired by the last few lines of the latest post, I was delighted to continue on the dragonfly theme.
The person who posted after me then became maudlin again.
I lost the plot big time yesterday, and wrote a catchy little ditty about a DUNG BEATLE.


I am now expecting to be unceremoniously drummed out of the Poetry club without further ado!

Get well soon Tazzy

A message for dear Tazzy. Hope you are feeling pain free darling. We have all three of us been thinking of you from here..even Willam and Gerda send their love and promise you oodles of cray fish when you come here ..just to speed your recovery.

David skyped me to tell me the op was a huge success and that a piece of snapped vertebrae was embedded into your nerve...you poor girlie. How that consultant could have recommended "plenty of exercise"..beggars belief...but it just goes to show that medicine is NOT an exact science.

Thrilled that you seem to be pain free...are you sure its not the drugs????? Whatever..YIPPEE!
Kisses DawnXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

STOP PRESS. Thursday 3rd December.

Things are going very well with the book on the Harper Collins Authonomy site.

Today I broke the 300 rank on the overall list of 5000 or so books of all genre posted on the site.

Also, when I punched in the "Children's" top weekly books..ARK comes in at NUMBER 2 !!!!!!! How amazing is that!

I really ought to start getting my final chapters drafted now...whoops...still deciding on which of the three endings to go for.

Crayfish festival

This is the "watch dog" at the house where we stayed on the Friday night

ARTY SHOTS

On one inside wall of the shack, it is decorated with washed up number plates.

The shack at Silver Dose

Late night braai at the shack

The "Donkey" or water heater at the shack!

Breakfast at the shack

Greeting sign at the shack

Bedroom at the shack.

November 09 WILD COAST trip

our route: Kakamas/Springbok/Kamieskroon/Garies [where we turned West and left the map and hugged the coast!] but we eventually ended up in Clanwilliam. Total road trip around 1000 miles.

On Tuesday evening, Willam and Gerda, our neighbours who live the other side of the Augrabies road to us arrived to discuss and plan our three day road trip down the Wast Coast, to Lamberts Bay...the purpose of this trip was to show us something o0f the wild west coast also known as the "diamond coast". Much of this land has, until recently been known as "Sperrgebiet" meaning a diamond area that was prohibited for public access, only recently has it been opened.
Willam is a fervent crayfish man, and there is a festival or "kreeffees" in Lamberts bay on Friday to celebrate the opening of the season.

whoops..wrong pictures of Willam cray fish hunting

We were given instructions to get ourselves licences from the Kakamas post office before we left on Thursday.And as we are not "campers" we were given a list of what to borrow and a list of food and drink to bring with us.
Thursday at 2.00 pm saw us loading up Willam`s overstuffed bakkie and heading off to Springbok, where we purchased HUGE quantities of ice for the three large ice boxes. We travelled the familiar Cape Town route but turned off after three hours at a place called Garies...this is right in the middle of the most deserty section, and we found ourselves on a dirt road heading towards the sea and a place that doesn't even appear on a map, called Groenriversmond [Green river mouth]. Turn off from the main highway at Garies onto the gravel road.



Either side of us, rolled semi scrubby desert and bush, which after about an hour turned into sandy hills with the cold blue Atlantic on our left.

We drove on this kind of track for 160 kilometers!

The track we were driving changed from loose gravel to pale sand and soon we saw the glint of the sea...it was by now around 6.00 pm and we knew that we had an hour of light before the sun went down.

I was quietly fretting over having enough time to erect the tent before the light left us..as it had been loaned from a friend who assured us that all the bits were in it and that it was very easy to put up so I hadn't done a practice run!!!!

It is difficult to explain quite how remote this coastland is...but from the moment the terrain changed to sea immediately to our right and gorsey dunescapes to our left...we saw NO houses at all...the very occasional tent nestled on the many sandy coves...But still we thundered on....Willam seemed unaware that we were no longer on a tarmac road...and Gerda and I were suffering from a roller coaster ride in the back.

Finally Willam started to shout "WE found it...SILVERDOSE!!!!" there on the edge of a deserted cove was a wooden shack....and we turned off the sand road into the dunes and parked next to the shack. One of Willams friends has been quietly [and illicitly] building this shack for the past 10 or so years...its made of driftwood and beach combed building materials and it meant that Bossy was OFF THE Hook on the camping front!!!!!!

" The beach at SilverDose"