Where my roots can still be found. This is a competition-winning photo by Andre Steenkamp of Wakkerstroom, the small town where my family had lived for generations. Slightly to the right of the photograph is the towns two cemeteries. One is very old and crumbling, while the bigger one right next to it is younger. We sometimes stopped there on our way to Bible study at Uncle Gert de Jagers farm at Blood River. Then my parents would point out the graves of the old people about whom we had heard so much for so long. They would cultivate in us a sense of heritage and a sense of kinship with these people who belonged to a vanished generation. They seemed strange to us - like distant heroes from a story book - yet at the same time also comfortingly familiar. Somehow, I could not help but feel that they belonged to me, just as I belonged to them. There was old great-great-great grandma Strauss, who still lead the oxen as a little girl on the Great Trek in the 1830s. In another row lay Uncle David Klopper, who was such an impressively handsome man when he was young, and whom I could hardly reconcile with his pictures as an old man. My grandmother once stroked the picture of him and his sister, shown as laughing children, and sadly sighed: Theyre also long dead now... I found this hard to understand. That children who looked so happy could have grown old and died. To the mind of a child, dying is for old people. Children are exempt. We only discover reality by degrees as the years go by. There was also great-great-grandfather Frederik Kolbe, who was the son of our original ancestor, and relocated here somewhere in the 1860s or 70s, always looking so noble and distinguished in his pictures with his wide mustache and lively blue eyes. And great-great grandpa George Kolbe, who looked so much like King George V that people sometimes called him King George. There was also great-grandpa Len Labuschagne, whom I knew as a child and who, when asked how old he was, would smile and say in his elegant bass voice: 98, not-out. He nearly made it to a 100. Among the giants in our forest, there were also the little shrubs. Young Angeline, who died as a little girl during the Anglo-Boer War and who sleeps beneath a crumbling stone in the old part of the cemetery. My great aunt always told me that I should never name a girl after her because she bore an unlucky name. I beg to disagree, however. Legend has it that she was named after a sunken ship, the Martha Angeline, and I always like the name. Always the stubborn rebel, I decided long ago that if I had a daughter, I would name her after this tiny little girl whom nearly everyone had forgotten. Some in the graveyard werent family, but they felt like family. There was Uncle Wim Rabe, my grandfathers neighbour, and his son Tom, who were buried together after a tragic car accident. Uncle Wim always did the talking, but he was one of those that you could listen to and always learn from. When the country feared a civil war, he told us it would never happen. Theyll take our rights little by little, he declared, each time just enough so that it wont be fighting for. Until one day what is left wont be worth fighting for either. He was right about that, just as he was about many other things as well. Beside them was their second son, Gerhard, who was my boyhood buddy, who was murdered on his farm a year or three later, leaving a family that now consisted of only widows. He was yet another victim of the hundreds of farm murder that weve experienced since our country began abandoning its values of decency. Gerhards death had touched me, because we were nearly the same age, and he was always such a happy and decent kid. There were many nights, when opening farm gates in the mid- to late nineties when I thought there might be a bullet waiting for my back. It could easily have been me, yet it wasnt. It leaves one always thinking about answers for questions you havent been able to figure out yet. There were also graves that dated back to the Anglo-Boer War. I only began to understand who they were in later years, when I grew old enough to feel sorry for them. They too, had parents who anxiously waited for their return. Perhaps some of their graves were never visited afterwards by grieving relatives. But their absence must have been missed just as much. They were enemies from long ago, yet today people dont even notice their graves, and nobody resents their presence in the little patch of soil that they now own. It is too long ago to matter. Their lives were lost behind the event horizon of living memory. I sometimes wondered whether my great-grandfather or his brothers might have shot any of them? I suppose well never know, and if they had, Im sure they themselves wouldnt have known it either. Im glad for their sake that they never did. Upon occasion my mother would pick wild flowers on the farm, and hold them on her lap so that we could put them on my grandfathers grave. She told us that my grandfather always liked to pick wild flowers for my grandmother. She had a love for flowers which surpassed that of anyone else Id ever known. Grandmothers grave site was laid out next to his, with her name and date of birth already engraved upon the granite. Only the death date was still blank. I always found that strange, but Grandmother didnt seem to share my view. To her it was just natural. To her, it was the place where she ultimately belonged, and it wasnt strange at all that she was on a detour to her destination. Next to them was the grave of her sister who never married. This was not her home town, but when she died she was gathered among those who was closest to her own blood. The bonds of blood transcend death in the long run. The flowers made a lasting impression on me. Flowers on the graves, and the fields of billowing cosmos that surround the cemetery in late summer. Thats the nice thing about cemeteries and children. Children dont see them as sad places. To children, they are mysterious and intriguing places full of secrets and questions that need answering. An excellent spot for playing hide and seek. Or, as my mother used to do when she was a girl - to lie upon the sun-baked gravestones in winter, staring at the endless sky. I can imagine that my parents might have been a little sad sometimes when they looked at my grandfathers grave, but mostly I remember our visits as something that seemed to focus on a happy future. Indeed, in the car afterwards, my parents often used the opportunity to explain death to us. We grew up with the happy assurance that we would one day get to meet all our friends and relatives who slept beneath the stones. Life was easier, because we did not fear its dark side. We understood that death was only temporary. It was not the end of something, but rather the start of something new. I dont remember ever feeling afraid of death. I think I saw it more as an expected event which usually arrived with inconvenient timing. Once every so many years, when I still get to drive through Wakkerstroom, Im always met by a comforting sense of belonging. Even though all the old people I once knew are now dead or gone, it still seems familiar and welcoming. In the big old church, generations of us were christened, educated, and buried. Much of what I grew up with, had been paid for across the counter of the tiny Barclays bank with its arched windows set in walls of neatly dressed stone. Mr. CK Barrys law practice still stands untouched by time, looking no different at all to the days when he still drew up my grandfathers contracts and notarized his documents. The magistrates court also looks exactly like it did before the Boer War, 116 years ago. It just has a steel palisade fence around it, symbolic of the encroachment of crime in our modern country. In front of this building the commandos assembled before they rode away to war, and sang the anthem of the old Transvaal Republic. At the gathering great-great grandfather Kolbe grumbled: Here were singing Kent Gij Dat Volk today. Here we shall be singing God Save the Queen eventually. He rode away on commando with them, and lived to see his sad prophecy become reality. And so the years roll by in Wakkerstroom, doing surprisingly little to erode its appearance or disturb its way of life. The yuppies are buying up old homes and fixing them slowly, and at the upper end it is starting to look a little like the Transkei. Yet the canna flowers still bloom in burgundy and gold the way they always have. There are still jersey cows that graze upon the commons, and maybe even still some geese that waddle down the streets at dusk. Even though great-great grandfathers old townhouse has had its name changed by the yuppies who now own it, the same massive cast iron key still unlocks the front door, and in the garage the stick that he used to pull down the door for his old Plymouth is quite amazingly still being used for the same purpose. The air still seems as fresh at that high altitude, and the sky still carries that same unique powdery blue which is an exact copy of the eyes of my uncle, my grandfather, and nearly all the Kolbes that I know of. It has a sense of Rip van Winklean timelessness about it. I often think that when I die one day I would like to be buried there. But then I remember what my parents told me about what death really is, and I realize that were just driven by human sentiment. I dont really care what happens to me when Im gone. Even granite weathers to dust eventually, and where our molecules are scattered has no bearing upon our ultimate destiny. Until then, Ill carry Wakkerstroom in my memory like a picture postcard. A happy scene from happy times. Every family should have a place that they can point to in their minds and gratefully declare: This is where my roots can still be found.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 19:13:30 +0000
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