December in South Arica 1977, Part One

 December in South Africa 1977, Part One

I had never understood candlelight in quite this way before. Oh there had been candles on the table Christmases past back home in Canada. For atmosphere, for festivity. While the electric crystal chandelier above cast the “real” light on a table laden with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce.… But this, this was different. Here in the corrugated iron shack that my friends had referred to as “the cottage”—not any cottage that I had ever seen in my growing up in Quebec—with no other light either inside the cottage nor outside in the black night of the Transkei, I understood how candlelight could draw a world down into the narrowness of those around the light, as if nothing else in the world existed. 

I looked at the six faces around the table, illuminated in the candlelight, my own pulsing with sunburn. "Oh you’ll be grand," they’d told me down at the beach that day. "We’ll tell you when to get out of the sun." And tonight they all remarked at how healthy I looked now, even as I winced inwardly at every move, tingling on my thighs, my shoulders, my face feeling like it would crack if I smiled. Envisaging what getting into the sleeping bag tonight might be like, lying down on the hard cot, then having to find my way to the outhouse in the dark because I had this terrible feeling that my stomach was not taking to the dried ostrich meat, aka biltong, they'd insisted I had to try at dinner. 

And now they were excitedly talking about the 2-day hike that was planned for tomorrow, along more of the Wild Coast to see Cathedral Rock and Waterfall Bluff. We’d swim in the Mlambomkulu River. We’d sleep out under the stars, bringing only our sleeping bags and some bread and peanut butter, water of course. My one excitement was that Karen mentioned she still had some Cadbury chocolate she'd bring along. How much, I wondered and why hadn't I thought to pack that?

“I don’t suppose there’s a Howard Johnsons on the way?” I said weakly. They laughed, thinking I was joking. I wasn’t. All I could think of was miles and miles of walking in the sun, scrub trees providing little shade or privacy for potty breaks, pulling jeans on over my second-degree sunburn. That night, as we said our prayers before bed, I prayed that it would at least rain.

Still, despite my city-girl moaning about no electricity, no plumbing and no restaurants for the past two days, my rough edges WERE starting to rub off. At least I recognized how once-in-a-lifetime this experience really was, even though once in a lifetime meant that I didn't think I'd want to repeat it anytime soon. 

Wait, I think that I’ve actually begun this story of Christmas in South Africa a quarter of the way in and it might be well to backtrack a bit, to give some context and reasoning as to how I had got here.

I had arrived at Jo’burg Airport two days previously. I had flown from Montreal to London, stayed in London for two days and then on Day 3 intended to fly to Johannesburg, a 13-hour flight. However, my flight from London to Johannesburg had had to turn back to Heathrow shortly after take-off due to one of the engines catching fire. After the previous nights’ accommodations in London that were a cross between Bates Motel and Fawlty Towers, the almost 48 hours of traveling could have been a portent of how this holiday would keep me on my toes. I did learn a precious lesson that has served me well in the ensuing 47 years of travel: never wear a white outfit traveling and always pack spare underwear and toiletries in a carry-on that’s small enough that they won’t take it away from you.

We finally landed in Jo’burg with no further mishaps on the second attempt and I walked down the staircase to blinding sunshine and 98º weather on December 14th. The first thing I was aware of was the “whites only” and, next to it, "coloreds" lines at the airport, then the suspicious glances at my passport and not exactly welcoming "why are you coming here" inquisition by tall blond Security guards in beige shorts and shirts. This was during apartheid and South Africa wasn't a top tourist spot. The inquisition through, my bag collected I then had an awkward reunion with Don, the man I had come to visit. We quickly realized in a half hour sitting in a park: "Can we go to a cafe?" "No, we’re in a hurry, but if you need a rest after your 13-hour flight, we can sit in this park for half an hour," that we hadn’t really known each other very well in our three-week quickie romance in Montreal a year before. “You’ve cut your hair short and you’ve gained weight." Don made those two observations sound SO disappointing while I looked at his bald spot, scraggly beard and hair and thought he wasn’t quite the Harlequin hero I had made him into in my hopes and dreams over the past several months.

But here we were, and, me being thousands of miles from “home” and Don being, in essence a gentleman, we decided we’d make the best of it. So we whizzed through the huge city in the car. I told myself it was not all that different from Toronto on a hot summer day with its skyscrapers and scores of people moving quickly on the sidewalks. I was introduced to our six traveling companions (three women, two men, all in our mid 20s), and despite their obvious curiosity at this winter pale Canadian who had flown thousands of miles to reacquaint herself with someone she barely knew, I was made very welcome. But there was a schedule to be followed. After a quick lunch of fruits and cold meats, of a kind that I had never seen before, the plans were discussed.

I was already a day late for the great December holiday these six had planned. London and Jo’burg quickly became a memory as we processed out of the city in our two-car caravan, seven people crammed between a VW Passat and a Beetle, loaded with luggage and groceries, into what I vaguely understood would be a weeklong oceanside holiday in a “cottage” on the Wild Coast before we would continue on to Christmas with Don's family somewhere further. 

My only experience of cottaging had been the annual 2-3 hour car ride from Montreal to the Eastern Townships to stay in a pleasant cottage, electricity and running water, gentle boating and swimming on a lake; this would prove to be nothing like that. 

We had left later than intended so that when, after three hours of traveling and stopping by the roadside to eat sandwiches for a dinner meal night fell. We were still in the Drakensberg Mountains and it was a blacker night than I had ever known, the only light apart from the stars being our headlights, picking out the winding road ahead, just the road visible.

Finally the lead car stopped. “We’ll stop here for the night, it's too difficult to see the road ahead,” Dieter said. “Where are we stopping?” I thought, “I don’t see any motel.” Out came two tents from the cars’ boots and, finding a spot of level ground, the tents were set up and we crawled in to sleep—four women in one, three men in the other. I know I kept a journal back then but it’s sadly long gone. I think, however, that writing by the car’s interior light, my writing would probably have been virtually indecipherable anyway, the furtive scribbling of someone who has somehow stumbled into an alien world, unsure of just what she has got herself into.

I awoke the next morning and stepped out of the tent to a world of mist, fog so thick that, again, it was like I had stepped into an episode of “The Outer Limits.” It cleared within a matter of minutes however and I noticed two things. One, we had camped on the brim of a cliff where, as the mist cleared, I could see an immense valley of green and, in the distance, more soaring mountains. And, the other was that we had camped on the edge of what seemed to be a construction site and, not far enough away from us, a Brahma bull was angrily pawing the ground. Thankfully, the workers came running, shooing the bull away as if it had been a sheep and shouting at us angrily in some foreign language. It must have been Afrikaans because Dieter and Don were able to respond to them with apologies, apparently explaining that we had had to pull over in the dark. I asked Don if the bull was some kind of guard dog but he said he didn't want to prolong the conversation, we needed to leave as soon as possible. We packed up the car again after more sandwiches. I was glad to see that the construction site had a port-a-potty, I still wasn’t that good at bush bathrooms, and off we went. Surely we would arrive at the cottage tonight. But that was not to be.

Adventure will continue in my next post but I wanted to include some photos, give my story my usual flair, but I don't have any of my own anymore (ah, the age of Kodachrome.) These two give a flavor of what greeted me on this part of my journey:

This is a photo of Johannesburg in 1970 but it could just as well have been 1977. That red Beetle on the side reminds me of Dieter’s blue Beetle. And the apartment building where one of the girls lived was along a row of high rise buildings, just like this photo. Photo of Jo’burg street courtesy of this website: https://atom.drisa.co.za/index.php/johannesburg-1970-near-corner-of-smal-street.

Ah, those beautiful Drakensberg mountains. Standing on the edge, the morning mist obscuring the view and then the sun burned off the mist and this was something like what I saw. It was beautiful and I actually enjoyed hiking along the paths later that morning. Photo is courtesy of this website: https://www.nondela.com/history-of-the-drakensberg/