Our Heritage – not just for a day!!
As a child, travelling up the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal always involved stopping on the side of the road to purchase delicious, freshly cut sugarcane to eat in the car. We also bought cowrie shells and beautiful beadwork.
Woven grass mats and bags, together with the highly poisonous little red seeds of the coral tree in some small medical bottle, made up the rest of our purchases. The Queen pineapple was often part of the package – usually thrown in to close the deal… These stalls had a special aroma, perhaps similar to thatch, which lingered in the car for the remainder of the journey.
Travelling in the Karoo, we often stopped at the concrete table and chairs provided (I assume) by the roads department. They were most often sheltered by pepper trees with their tiny pink peppercorns, providing light shade and a pungent aroma. It was an opportunity to stretch your legs and indulge in pre-packed sandwiches and hot tea made from the ubiquitous travel flask, as the heat beat down and the cicadas burned their song into your eardrum.
Winding down the Outeniqua Pass, there were always fruit stalls on the verge of the road, where we bought the most delicious, ripe peaches. This often resulted in trouble as, contrary to instructions, we couldn’t resist biting into them, upon which delicious juice ran down our chins and onto the car seats…
There are many definitions of “heritage”, but my favourite is: “Our heritage is what we have inherited from the past, to value and enjoy in the present, and to preserve and pass on to future generations.” It is specific to our culture, and we all have different memories and practices.
Whilst there is much of concern in South Africa, there is even more of an energy, a way of being, that is particularly unique in the world. And to be honest, I could not love a land more if I tried. We are quintessentially tied to our roots, and many who leave our shores find that their hearts have remained on this continent, in this land of savannahs, mountains, seashores and forests.
On Heritage Day in 2020, I wrote a piece entitled “Because I am, at the very core of my being, a child of Africa!” You may have seen it before, but I think it bears repeating. When I look at what I value about my country, it has little to do with “first world standards” (which would no doubt be nice), and everything to do with an Africa I know and love. I encourage you to read the piece below, and to contemplate just how rich we are in our little corner of the world…
I sit here quietly on Heritage Day, thinking about what it means to me to be South African, or even African. It seems easier to explain the effect that this land has on me…
The perfume of rain on African soil. The scent of woodfires drifting across the highveld on winter evenings. There’s a very distinctive aroma just as one starts coming into George / Knysna / Plett (I’ve never figured out which herb it is), in much the same way the smell of Wild Sage defines the area around Santawani in Botswana. The odour of thatch in a game lodge. The bouquet of dust and the various plants when one gets into the bush, sometimes a whiff of something dead.
The tang of the ocean at the seaside. The smell of ‘moer’ coffee over an early morning fire, or the delicious aroma of roasting meat over flames – whether you call it a braai or shisa nyama (but definitely NOT a barbeque).
There is also something about the light here. “Santorini Blue”… I don’t know if that’s an actual colour, but it seems to describe the hue of the highveld sky on a winter’s day to perfection. We live in “big sky” country – whether blue, or orange in sunset, or dark grey and rent by lightening, or velvet black and filled with stars that seem close enough to touch – the sky is ever present. As is the moon. I am always aware of the moon, from a sickle moon to the full fecund globe that is full moon. Silver light gilding thorn trees, juxtaposed against dark shadows on the savannah, is not a sight one easily forgets.
The caw of the ubiquitous, raucous Hadedah in suburbia, the burbling call of a rainbird (Burchell’s Coucal) when a thunderstorm is on its way, the beautiful Diederick’s Cuckoo announcing the arrival of spring, the screech of a barn owl or the evocative call of the Fish Eagle. Jackals calling as the sun goes down, a lion’s roar quite literally making the air reverberate, or the chilling whoops of the hyenas. The cacophony of barking geckos that start up as the sun goes down over Deception Pan, or a veritable orchestra of frogs around a pan in the summer months. Cicadas shrilling on days so hot that the air shimmers, or a nightjar calling in the dead of night in the bushveld.
Days of withering heat often followed by the lightest cool breeze, just as the sun is setting. A gentle little wind, which plays with your hair like an absent-minded lover, reminding you that the cool of the night will soon be with you. Walking in the bush very early in the morning, the sun’s rays catch the dew on spiders’ webs, reminding you that life, both seen and unseen, is all around you. Trout fishing as the sun peeps over the horizon in Dullstroom, so cold that the water droplets freeze on your line…
The colours of this land are not subtle either. The blood red of the coral tree, the green metallic glint of sunbirds, the striped black and white hide of the zebra, or sapphire blue of a kingfisher. The miles and miles of yellow and orange daisies in Namaqualand in September, or pink and white swathes of cosmos along the roads in April. The lilac and turquoise of the roller, the tawny hide of a lion or the emerald green of a little dung beetle that makes its appearance in the summer months. From the golden dunes of the Namib to an unimaginable number of greens in the Knysna Forest. All vivid and arresting.
Talk to me of Morrungulo or Tsodilo Hills, the great Drakensberg, Platteland dorps and the great Karoo. The warmth of Sodwana Bay or the icy kelp forests of the Atlantic Ocean. Of wine farms and fynbos in the Cape, to meerkats and diamonds in the north. Show me our people, in so many hues, with brightly coloured traditional costumes – and even brighter smiles.
All of this creates a frisson of excitement, passion each and every day, a vivid, immediate sense of being alive that I have found nowhere else….
These are my people. This is my land.
Because I am, at the very core of my being, a child of Africa!
We hope you enjoyed Heritage Day!! But, more importantly, we hope you continue to appreciate that which is yours each and every day, and celebrate this truly phenomenal part of Africa in which we are blessed to live…
Jacqui Ikin & The Cross Country Team
