Tag Archives: Transkei

Kei Shy

This woman was waiting for a taxi on the other side of the Kei River on the Wild Coast, having travelled across on the Pont for a R2 fee. She is Sangoma in training, apparently second level according to my friend Ncami from work at SustainEd. Ncami says the first level requires red soil to be painted on the face, and when you progress to second level you must paint it white. She was very patient with me snapping away, and nodded with stern approval at the pictures on my camera screen after they were taken. I always feel very shy to ask people if I can take pictures of them, and actually it was a friendly dude who asked her for me. We met through my complete cowardice, as he packed up laughing when he noticed me trying to sneak up on some enormous Nguni cows lying on the muddy river plain nearby. The laughing part came from me galloping away as soon as they moved a muscle…their horns were massive! He yelled at me to be brave and charge them if they ran at me…

A full moon in the Transkei

 

Sometimes the nights in the Transkei can be utterly unreal. If it wasn’t for the potential of big sharks swimming around in the dark water it may have been tempting to try night surfing! For anyone who wants to know, this was taken at Mdumbi. The Transkei is perfect for getting away from the madness of city life, and you can feel very far removed from ordinary stress out here. Other kinds of stress exist of course, my buddy Dirk came away from this trip with a parasite in his gut that gave him an illness similar to dysentery! Poor guy was man down for about a month – however, I did take him to Windmills in East London for a burger before he caught his plane home, that could also give you dysentery pretty easily! On an aside, we saw a knife fight between a security guard and a beggar while we waited for our food. Good times.

 

 

Day 1: Leaving KwaZulu Natal

And were off! I woke up at 5:30am, my Mom made me coffee, I ran around double checking things with that Christmas Morning feeling in my stomach, and by 6:03am I was in my car and selecting the first CD to listen to. My parents each had one sage piece of advice for me.

Dogfight: “Just…think ahead”

Pamela: “Just…remember to turn your lights on!” Continue reading

Ready, Steady…

It is Sunday the 22nd of February, and I am less than 10 hours away from starting my trip. But in a way I feel that it has already begun. Despite the fact that I have been completely useless at getting myself organised! I’ve been living out of bags and scratching through boxes to find things like mozzie repellent when I got bombarded by a fleet of the crafty nippers at 2am, and have been ignoring the mound of identifiable lumps in black plastic bags in Dogfights garage. But there are good reasons for being distracted from the task at hand… Continue reading