Day 83: The Botterkloof’s Boer and his Buddha

I am heading from Wupperthal in the Western Cape to Calvinia in the Northern Cape. It is a stretch of about 180km. I have just spent two rejuvenating nights in a Moravian mission station surrounded with mountains, where children play in the streets and donkeys hee-haw through the silence of night, a village where people sleep on their stoeps at night while the stars poke through the grapevines. I left with more than a pair of handmade sandals, some wonderful rooibos skin products and a packed lunch. I made friends for life.

It must be at least 38 degrees Celsius and it is only nine in the morning. My breathing is laboured. The scenery is spectacular, if only I could bother to look, but my vision is blinkered by an overwhelming sense of my discomfort. Blink-blink-blink. It feels as if my eyes have dried out. The distress message my brain emits like an SOS signal is ‘Sjoe, it’s hot. Sjoe, it’s hot . . . .’

The heat causes a discord, an imbalance in my rhythm. I feel jagged. Edgy. Not unlike the Cederberg terrain. Waves of heat assault me. Gravity seems to be tugging at my backpack until the pendulum of my momentum stops. I stand still in the solid heat, wriggle my backpack off, throw my arms out as if to swing myself back into motion and spin around slowly with my head flopping backwards.

As I take in the panorama of fynbos-covered mountains my senses of smell and vision return. I need to change my internal dialogue in order to see and smell and so I have a chat with Self about the reality of the situation. And it is simple, really: when will I ever walk in such freedom again? With only a backpack, a camera, no money, no bills to pay, no responsibilities or commitments other than just to be? Possibly never. This is the only reality. This is Freedom.

I saddle up again and hit the road. My internal dialogue has changed to ‘Wow, this is amazing. Wow, this is amazing!’

Now that I am conscious of the effect messages from my brain have on my body, I am very much tuned into the physical experience of placing one foot in front of the other. It is as though I can feel a spring uncoiling inside me. Within minutes my energy is renewed. Who needs expensive pep-up drinks, when the mind is so powerful?

I am heading in the general direction of Calvinia, a dorpie I’ve never visited, to find a woman who may or may not be there. Freedom continues to unfurl. There haven’t been many vehicles and I’ve walked for about five hours. I remember the bakkie that whooshed by in an awful hurry earlier and that’s when I hear noisy engines behind me. Turning, I see four vans approaching. The guy in the third vehicle pulls up his shoulders to sign apology as he passes. Everybody seems to be in a hurry today, I think as I’m left coughing in a cloud of dust. And then all is as silent and still as if they had never been.

Some farm workers earlier gave me directions to a tannie they think may have me – apparently I will recognise her house by the blue car parked in the yard. Savouring the experience of just being, I take my time getting there. I find that I am reluctant to cross to the other side of the road. Something tells me that a vehicle is approaching and that I should wait. About five minutes later I spot it. A blue twin-cab.

As if he stopped right here at this time for me every day, André pulls over to pick me up. He’s on his way back to his farm. He’s done some shopping, and not just for himself. When you’re about to re-enter civilisation from here the unwritten law is that you collect an assortment of shopping lists from neighbours along the way with a variety of supplies scribbled on them.

‘Do you know where we are?’ André asks and tells me this is the Botterkloof. He can take me as far as Botterkloof Pass but I’ll be on my own again from there. We stop off at one or two homes along the way to drop off supplies and airtime vouchers. The bakkie slides up and down the mountainous terrain.

At André’s home we get out. It’s hot and I half expect some tumbleweed to come rolling by. This place has the kind of silence in which you can hear a windmill creak. Inside the house the cooler boxes are unpacked in an almost festive air. André proudly offers me a beer and a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich and I realise that such treats are not on the menu for very long after shopping day. As I lay the table I notice a server to the side. A server with a Buddha on it. I hear André chuckle behind me. ‘Om!’ For a moment, I’m not sure whether that came from André or the wide-mouthed Buddha in the lotus position. Over lunch André tells me how he came to live in these remote parts. He just cracked. Having it all can do that sometimes.

A rusted old bakkie creeps up the drive just as I’m getting ready to leave. André hasn’t seen this vehicle before. We meet Izak, Augusta and Piet, smouse who travel around the Northern Cape to buy scrap metal and used car batteries.

André asks them where they are headed. Towards Nieuwoudtville along the R27 comes the answer. A plan is made. André has only one battery but he doesn’t want money for it, instead he barters a lift for me. Everyone is happy with the deal and before long I chug down the long driveway and back to the road that winds all the way into the Botterkloof Pass and beyond.

The great thing about a virgin road is that there is absolutely no sense of expectation. That’s what life on the road is like: improvisation; having no idea what might pop up ahead; dealing with things as they crop up; constantly changing; scratching one’s head sometimes, cursing at others. A general sense of moving forward, no matter what.

The smouse and I stop off at a few farms but there’s very little scrap around. It seems farmers recycle or reuse almost everything. I am offered cooldrink and home-made cookies in one of the farm kitchens. But only me.

Soetwater is where the Botterkloof road dead-ends into the R27 and civilisation. My drop-off point. The bakkie crawls away from me as I wave into the sunlight. Only its silhouette is visible. It must still be at least 38 degrees. It is five in the afternoon. There is a slight breeze, or am I imagining that?

The first steps back on the road are always when I ‘bag’ the experiences I’ve just had so that I have a clean slate for what is to come. Sometimes it’s an audible conversation with Self.

‘Yes, Sonja,’ I say to myself. ‘A boer from the Botterkloof, with a Buddha, bartered a lift for you with some smouse for a used car battery.’