Village Hike
Posted: 2/13/2005 11:30 PM ( Permalink)
As of January the 13th, I can add another line to my resume. Goat herder.
And I even have a bit of experience with cows.
Welcome to the Wild Coast. This area was formerly (in the Apartheid days) known as the Transkei, the homeland that the government set up for the Xhosa people. We knew we were heading off the beaten path because the frequency of livestock blocking the road incidents took a distinct upturn.
One of the highlights of the drive to Mthatha was driving past Nelson Mandela’s house. The house is in Qunu, Mandela’s boyhood home. It’s kind of funny because the house is literally right off the N2; a major highway. It’s a mansion by local standards, but I doubt Bush or Clinton lives as modestly. Of course, Mandela has a few other houses too that I haven’t seen so who knows.
As it happened, Mandela was arriving at the house just a day or two after we drove past. It was not a happy occasion however. His son had just died a few days earlier from AIDS and they were holding the funeral at the house in Qunu. When we drove past there were already a lot of people out in front.
We spent our first night in Mthatha which is a good sized city. It has a university and an airport, and even electricity (most of the time; more on that later), but it isn’t a place the tourists normally go; the only thing that you would call a tourist attraction is the Nelson Mandela museum. But you know what? That’s a good thing. If you’re going to visit a country, you should take a look at places that other tourist aren’t going. In our case, it was easy because we had a built in guide in the form of my brother and his family.
Back to the goat herding. On the 13th, Lynell took us to this Xhosa village a few dozen kilometers south of Mthatha. When they first moved to South Africa, Brian & Lynell spent several weeks in this village as part of an enculturation experience. We’re talking no electricity, living in these round thatched-roofed structures. The village has a community garden about about a mile down the pike (or footpath as it were). We walked out there and this is where we picked up the goats. We also managed to pick up a lot of little kids.
Still on school holiday and wondering why the heck there were four white people walking out here for no apparent reason. Well, there was as reason and this was it.
Miles and miles of rolling green hills and picturesque countryside. Not a bad way to spend a day. And I think the kids had some fun too.