Shorelines (21 page)

Afterwards, we spoke briefly to Father Eli at the doorway of the church.

“The community is not doing too badly,” he said. “The fishing is weak, but the hotel and the missile-testing site at De Hoop employ some of our people.”

“Do tourists come up here?” we wanted to know.

“Yes, but they don’t seem to want to speak or engage with anyone,” Father Eli said ruefully. “They just look at the buildings as though the people aren’t there.”

We walked back to the hotel and went onto the delightful patio for beer shandies and bacon-and-Brie
ciabattas
with pesto and balsamic vinegar. We kept stealing glances up the hill at Kassiesbaai and that other life. And remembered the incense, the altar girls, the open-hearted singing and one transcendent moment in time when everything seemed holy, even to professional cynics like us.

Just after lunch, in the lounge we met Derek Drew, the hotel manager, beneath a strange trophy of a fish with horns. This was the famed ‘bokvis’ we’d heard about.

“It’s a trap,” I warned Jules. “Set for travel journalists and naïve tourists. Like the miniature kangaroo of the Kalahari, which is actually a spring hare. And the jackalope (or is that antellabit?) of Arizona, USA, that rabbit with the antlers on its head.”

“Who just arrived by helicopter on the front lawn?” was our first question.

“Oh, someone rich,” shrugged Derek.

In the mid-afternoon, we drove into the hinterland towards the mission village of Elim.

The first time we passed through the tiny Moravian settlement was back in the false summer of 2001, and we hardly noticed the place. Granted, the weather had turned foul and a bitter coastal wind was whipping us off to Arniston, where smoked snoek, Government port, roaring fires and deliciously trashy paperback novels beckoned. And marshmallows too.

Elim was a washed-out grey ghost out there beyond the windscreen wipers, its cottages bleak and shut tight against the elements. Yet something told us to track down the local tourism offices and take some numbers for a return trip. Even in this disgusting pea-soup weather beloved so much by coastal-Cape types, the village had a seductive, Thomas Hardy feel to it. And so, the next year, we returned in sunshine …

Beaulah Pontac of the Elim Tourism Bureau personally escorted us to Die Gastehuis, a beautiful old building with grey walls, white trim, thatched roof and green fences. Julienne and I wandered around the place, which could easily sleep a dozen, and finally chose a room for ourselves. Our lodge hostess, Bridget Jonathan, popped in and apologised for the fact that, due to the metre-thick walls, we could only catch the SABC 1 and 2 television channels. We assured her all was well: we weren’t even going to switch the thing on.

As the sun dropped over the Bokkeveld mountains and Bridget bustled about inside preparing a delicious meal of mutton chops with rice and vegetables, we sat on the steps outside, eavesdropping on the village of Elim. A few metres away stood the magnificent church, the proud centrepiece of the settlement around which everything revolved. From inside we heard the strains of a brass band. Down the road a motorcycle that had long lost its silencer came roaring up in the twilight, its teenage rider yelling with glee. Then the sound abruptly disappeared, and the brass band in the church struck up again. Kerkstraat, the main drag, stood lined with gingerbread cottages, mostly thatched, that seemed to stretch way beyond sight. The weather was balmy, and the stable doors of the cottages were half-opened, revealing Elimmers involved in the time-honoured custom of stoep-talk.

Elim was a very special place. You could not just buy a plot, build a face-brick nightmare, pull in and party with your millionaire buddies. Besides having to be a member of the Moravian Church, you also had to negotiate many other stages of approval before you would be accepted in the community. And, unlike most places in South Africa, the community always had the last say in matters here.

In 1824, the farm Vogelstruyskraal was bought by Hans Peter Hallbeck of the Germany-based Moravian Church. It was settled by former farm labourers from the area, who proceeded to build a church-protected community that was blessed with the sweet waters of the Nuwejaars River and the 70-odd magical, medicinal varieties of
fynbos
that abounded between Wolwengat and the Kouberg to the east.

Eight years later, a British barque sailing from Liverpool to Bombay was wrecked on a reef near Dyer Island. Two years later, hull planks from the wrecked ship were used in the building of the main church in the former farmstead of Vogelstruyskraal, now Elim.

The church clock dated back to 1764, when it had been installed in a small town in south-east Germany. After nearly 140 years of service in Europe, the clock was brought to Africa and, in 1911, was donated to the Elim church.

We heard it was the oldest working clock in South Africa. Then there was the church bell, which was probably the reason the village had never burnt down, even though most of its roofs consisted of highly flammable thatch.

“If there’s an emergency, someone just rings the church bell and everyone comes running”, said lifelong resident Christina Afrika, who ran a coffee shop at the old Water Mill. “And if someone dies, all the people of Elim gather around to comfort and to help with tea, sugar, cake. The support is always there, and people are upset if they aren’t informed of a situation they could have helped with.”

“Hell, in Jo’burg I could disappear for months and my neighbours wouldn’t notice,” I joked to some of the women of Elim as we drank coffee at Christina’s. I could see they thought I was a bit of a sad bugger.

The next morning I was up before the dawn. I set up a wide-angle shot of a sleeping Elim – not a soul was astir – timed for the precise moment when the sun hit the two rows of gingerbread cottages. Good cloud in background, Bokkeveld looking handsome in the distance.

First light duly arrived, accompanied by a glorious blast of rainbow from the heavens, starting somewhere at Cape Agulhas and dropping smack dab into the end of Kerkstraat.

After breakfast, Beaulah told us about the thatchers of Elim, world-famous men who travelled the globe practising their craft. “They’ve gone to places like Spain and Dubai on thatching projects,” she said. “They teach their sons how to lay thatch and so the custom goes on. In the week, however, you just see women, old folks and children in Elim. The men are out working as thatchers or on the farms. They come home at the weekend.”

I asked about perlemoen poaching. The newspapers had been bristling with tales of coastal poaching, Chinese Triad connections and the fact that if you spoke about it you could end up sleeping with the kelp.

They told me how a gang had infiltrated the sleepy little village in the late 1990s, seducing the local girls with cellphones and money and moving into some of the cottages. One Sunday the whole community of Elim gathered and marched to the houses involved, and warned the owners of the houses that they would have to evict the gang members or face leaving the village themselves. One of their pastors, Dominee Freddie Hans, spoke to the gang leaders and after that, they all moved out and into another, more welcoming, community …

I wanted to meet this amazing Freddie Hans, but the dominee was getting ready for the Sunday activities, where the newly confirmed members of the church shared a very special and private service. “It’s as if you’re really sitting at The Lord’s Table,” Beaulah beamed. “The men and women sit apart, dressed in either white or black. The women cover their heads with white cloth. The doors are closed and the curtains are drawn.” And anyhow, the gang affair was over and done with. More important than that was Eternity Sunday, being celebrated this weekend. As in small towns all over Europe, festivals like these keep the community bonded.

While Beaulah was escorting us around the village, showing us, amongst other things, the only monument to the abolition of slavery in the country, the village was heading to the cemetery to spruce up the family graves. Every year at this time, the plots were lovingly cleaned and decorated with flowers of the region, many of which are found nowhere else.

We joined the Elim community in their first service of the Sunday, just before the service. Inside the church, all was white, symbolising simplicity and purity. The organ, brought up from Three Anchor Bay in 1964, was a magnificent machine. And when the power failed, the brass band took over. I asked Beaulah why there were no crucifixes in the church.

“The members of the congregation carry their crosses in their hearts,” she replied …

The floods of 1906 – well, who can forget them? Across the 36 000 sprawling hectares where the De Hoop Nature Reserve stands today, the low-lying
fynbos
is completely submerged. On Sundays, the extremely sociable farmers of the area visit each other by lifeboat, skiff or, in some cases, crudely built rafts.

This is where the farm Melkkamer once flourished, under the talented and eccentric hand of one John Henry (Biddy) Anderson.

So back to the floods. After seven days of constant rain, with water levels ever rising, the Wilsons of nearby Skipskop Farm decide to visit Biddy Anderson to see if he wants a bite and some help bringing his livestock to higher ground. Their arrival has to be unannounced, because all ‘coms’ are down. So the Wilsons pack a picnic lunch, jump in their lifeboat and row over to Melkkamer.

Biddy and his building partner, a man called Dickson, have been hard at work, putting up a loft in the stables. But the rain has temporarily halted all construction and the flood level is cause for concern. Biddy, for some reason, has a piano in the stable. He and Dickson manoeuvre it upstairs to the newly built loft. Biddy looks out the window at the world of water and decides what the heck. So they head back downstairs and bring up a case of whisky.

And this is how the Wilsons find Biddy Anderson and Dickson: in fine whisky-high spirits up in the loft, tinkling the ivories without a care in the world.

Jules and I had arrived at De Hoop to stay the night and, possibly, head up to Koppie Alleen and watch 60-tonne whales breaching exultantly out of the sea below us. De Hoop was one of South Africa’s most important whale sanctuaries, especially for southern right cows and their calves. It was also a great place for mucking about with a macro lens in the aforementioned
fynbos
.

The only slight problem was the missile-testing range right next to De Hoop. And when we arrived at our little self-catering cottages, there was a note to say that the Overberg Testing Range would be firing missiles the next morning. Please don’t go up to Koppie Alleen. You might encounter a problem. Or something to that effect.

So it all looked like a bit of a bust, really. The weather was turning into a dog, all grey cloud and thunder-boomy in the distance. Pretty soon it was bucketing down and we found ourselves in the tiny De Hoop museum with nothing to do but wander disconsolately around the modest displays and sulk.

Then Jules found the Books. Oh yes, the Books. They were two tatty old scrapbooks full of memories and we fell on them like meerkats at a grub-feast. In one of them was
The People of De Hoop Nature Reserve: A Cultural-Historical Heritage,
compiled by Ann and Mike Scott of the Overberg Conservation Services. A demure title, considering the sexy old stories it contained.

This was where we read about Biddy Anderson, but before him came a slave called Februarie, originally from Hangklip near Pringle Bay. Februarie was a
droster
, a runaway slave, who chose to live as an outlaw instead of at the foot of a colonial master. He wandered up the coast (they weren’t firing missiles over your head in those days) some time in 1850 and set himself up in a cave on the north-west corner of what later became the Melkkamer property.

Initially, Februarie was well liked. He lived by hunting and taking out honey where he could find it, exchanging the sweet dripping combs for food with workers on surrounding farms. But then he got sly, and then the trouble began.

He started taking the workers’ wives as hostage, extorting clothes, tobacco, candles and other supplies from them. Every now and again he would steal a sheep from one of the surrounding farms. His cave had a narrow entrance, which he could easily defend. Besides, when life became too harrowing for him there, Februarie would decamp to another cave at Kathoek in a
kloof
to the south-east. The farmers were upset about their stolen sheep and decided to do something about it.

Jules was reading this out aloud to me while the rain pounded on the roof. I was soon caught up in the story.

“So what did the farmers do?”

“They caught him one night while he was climbing over the wall of a kraal,” said Jules. “They beat him up and dragged his body off to the nearest aardvark hole and stuffed him into it.”

Rough justice. So back to Biddy Anderson, my hero of the moment. The ebullient Biddy was a double Springbok, starring in both rugby and cricket in the late 1890s. I found a newspaper clipping, a sports report written by one Paul Dobson detailing a game played on 5 September 1896: