Photograph: Helene Liebenberg fights Beaufort West’s drought from Ladismith

Notices all over Ladismith called on residents to donate bottled water to the people of Beaufort West who were suffering the drought particularly badly.

“Eight thousand people are without water,” the notices read.

A local resident called Helene Liebenberg was behind the campaign, having been inspired by requests on Radio Sonder Grense to motorists travelling in the direction of Beaufort West, to take bottled water for the residents.

As the agent for a courier company, Helene managed to have the donated water transported free of charge.

Looking up towards Towerkop and other mountains in the Klein Swartberg range, she recalled when Ladismith had feared water shortages.

“Luckily our mountain saved us. It’s like a sponge. It takes in water, then it lets it out again. The farmers put pipes into the stream and the town had water.”

That was “two or three years ago,” she said.

In the past month residents of Ladismith and neighbouring Nissanville had  donated 2000 litres of bottled water to their compatriots up the road.

“Small towns are filled with gossip and scandals but in time of crisis, everyone comes together.”

Ladismith residents know when the mountains around them have water.

There’s a light that they can see up on the mountain, kept glowing from power generated by running water from a mountain stream.

“So long as we have our little light burning on our mountain, Ladismith has water.”

The light was a successor to one run by a dynamo generator, fuelled by a bicycle pedal system that a character of Ladismith, Oom Stanley de Witt, operated when he once lived on the mountain.

The mountains, Helene added, had been central to the lives of children growing up in Ladismith.

“For years they have gone up on to Towerkop during their holidays, sometimes for weeks at a time. To check up on them you’d fire a shot into the air, then they would fire one in reply and you’d know they were okay.”

Just as the light showed the town’s water supply was okay!

COMMENT: How do you feel about people in one town helping those short of water in another town?