Three days with the "pure" Afrikaner
"He preferred not to talk to her granddaughter to use English". The story has me, with the phrase, Carola, a South African journalist who lived the times of arrival of democracy in the forefront, working in television. It, with his parents went to live in the United States as a child. He learned to speak English. Then, each time he returned to South Africa was with his grandmother Afrikaner, "With which he had a tender relationship. I wanted and I loved her, but we could not talk anymore, she did not speak English ", I explained. "So I grew, thinking it was impossible to talk to her until after my grandmother died and came back to South Africa knew other English-speaking, just refused to use. He hated the English and everything having to do with them. She was one of the women was held in a British concentration camp during the time of the Anglo-Boer wars ". He saw his sister die, her aunts to many of the thousands who died in an invention, concentration camps, that relates to the Nazism but was created by the British in this land. Detained women and children of the Boers in miserable conditions, unable to overcome a war that had an enormous superiority in numbers and weaponry. And defeated, enclosing and destroying their families.
He saw his sister die, her aunts to many of the thousands who died in an invention, concentration camps, that relates to the Nazism but was created by the British in this land.
This data is important to understand the mad South Africa. I spent three days for the first time really getting to know the life of a people, the Afrikaner, has finished being held in the desert, trying to live on their farms, maintain their strong religious beliefs and separated from that world that was so scary; this world to be mixed. A people that created the horrific apartheid system. (There are many historical nuances to understand their constant flight)
The Little Karoo is a semi-desert area is 140 kilometers north of Cape Town. Become a semi-desert garden by the tenacity with which they work the Boer, that channeled rivers and planted their vines and fruit trees until they managed to mutate the reddish sand into infinite green. Montagu is one of the important cities of the area. His face is a city of Victorian houses with two long streets that cross the town and a whole underworld of homes that are degraded to an inevitable tightening township. It is not an easy place, people will be so distrustful of courts as abroad. "We need more tourists to come", I said the happy owner of the Victorian 1906 hotel while I invited a few drinks. In the bar scene was film: there were three elders who did not open his mouth in the hour-long conversation and I reckon that had sat there 300 years. They watched as the stranger looks, without looking.
Then, Robert, a descendant of Dutch with him on the trip and has decided to leave Cape Town and live in Montagu, I was teaching every corner of the city (days after this trip suffered a serious illness that recovers. Great guy). We entered the house museum Jouberhuis, an important Boer family had the honor of feeding within those walls the Afrikaner hero, Paul Kruger, in the middle of fierce fighting with the English. Kruger A portrait hangs on the wall of a house where the decor is almost oppressive. Transmitting a time tolerance, but also conveys the pride of the traditions that originate in the stomach.
Montagu spent a night away to live in Barrydale, a people which meet at the only bar open at night, Bistro, old Boer, hippies, gays, artists and a misplaced tourist like me. Believe me, this mix is not easy to find. It is the modern town, artistic, in which you talk to two young white Afrikaner who say "Mandela is the best thing about South Africa" without lowering his voice. There is certainly a widely held view in this community, Barrydale but get the feeling that time it has been. Yes, not enter a single black or mestizo in the bar all night. As always when traveling, more perceptions than certainties.
From Montagu we went to live an opposite night in Barrydale, a people which meet at the only bar open at night, Bistro, old Boer, hippies, gays, artists and a misplaced tourist like me.
Finally, I was lucky to eat one of the few remaining Afrikaans writers. Crhistine Bark Houses invited us to his farm lost in the Karoo where she lives with her husband and daughter. A lovely woman, cultured, passionate about traveling and speaking with some ease on the thorny issues. "It's hard to break the idea that we are racist", recognizes. He shows me the old farm house and the parents of her husband. Upon entering you see the pictures of Kruger, De la Rey and Botha, All great heroes of the wars with the English. Then we'll see the graves of their ancestors, near the vineyards. There are three large family tombs and graves next to dozens of workers. "We buried us. We have good relationship with the mestizos, we are close but do not mix. We work well with them ", says. "With the blacks is more difficult". The lengua une, coloreds speak Afrikaans here but English. (I visited two schools where whiteboards mestizos and walls were full of phrases in Afrikaans; English is given after six years as a second language). I spoke with travel Crhsitine, gave me two books in Afrikaans that I can never read and explained to me a nice story. "One of the books I wrote for an experience I had in Madrid, in the Plaza Mayor. I saw every day on the terrace of a bar to an older woman, well-dressed, offered a rosary. Asked for money. One day I asked a waiter who spoke some English woman who was there every morning. "She's crazy, has lost his mind. He just wants to have money in their hands and sell all kinds of. You do not need the money ", I said. When my grandmother died had lost my mind. All I wanted was money in the hands”. I understood that the world is very similar and wrote a book talking about it. That's the great secret of travel, discover that there are many more similarities than differences.
Then, I explained that his most famous novel, “Padmaker”, revolves around the coldness with which the Afrikaner mothers raised their daughters. "It was a distant, no love. It was a difficult book, talking about my life with my mother. When I finished I gave it with fear for him to read. He did and said, "is fantastic". I froze, I did not understand or would not understand that talking about it. Many women when they read the book or see me write me and tell me that they could not stop to mourn. That this was also his life ".
Finally, also spoke of another taboo in the apartheid era. "My father was devoted to work building roads. We had no money, were poor, but that was never said. The targets were not poor, not talked about it ". Damned and maintained by a state guarantee then first white bread. Then, what remained was for the rest. The distinction was simple: Color looked.
We finished eating and told us Crhistine agradeciéramos is the women who worked at home, a mestizo woman has spent his entire life with her. It seemed that he could be both a member of the family as a stranger. Always that duality, the near and far at once without one knows which side of the line is.
Comments (1)
Juan Gerardo Castro Chavez
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The history of the Anglo-Boer War is very interesting, the accounts of their experience among Afrikaners, the terrifying Apartheid system and her husband's house of the popes that has images of Afrikaner leaders and Boer leaders like Paul Kruger.
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