Letter from Groot Marico, No.2

Spring has arrived now we’ve had our first rains

I don’t know about you, but for me it doesn’t feel like the start of spring until the rains come. Yes the weather is warmer, in fact it’s been a heat wave. The trees and plants have changed to their summer uniforms of greenery while blossoms indicate where the fruit trees in the local landscape are – all novelties to this newcomer. But below all this has been a layer that is yellow, brown and dusty – evidence of parched ground and the fact that the rains seem tardy in coming.

Then today after 5 pm I go for a neighbourhood walk with the dogs and hear this faint rumbling in the distance. I call out in Afrikaans to Maria, the housekeeper at the centre, as I pass her house: “Is that rain?” She says “ja” but ignorant of the area I ask is it not blasting from a local slat quarry. “No it’s rain” she tells me.

So I set off with the dogs over our nearby small hill which we call Temple Hill in the direction where I now see grey is beginning to show over the horizon. Occasionally I see small slivers in lightening in the distance. We return while I see the local bigger koppies covered in green vegetation change colour as the light around them changes.

We return home and the storm draws nearer – I hear more and more rumbles as I answer emails. The light gets darker as the sun is setting. The wind is now blowing vigorously, shaking and pushing an empty plastic cold drink bottle left by the builders and drawing up dust. Tashi the cat sits on a wall observing it all. The dogs are a bit on edge and nagging that I feed them before it rains.

I am reveling in the seasonal moment, the light, the wind but Josh who is building a wooden cabin two storeys up for us, is worried that plastic temporarily in place on its roof won’t hold up during a big storm.

Then it’s here! The rain has arrived amongst the wind – small drops showering away on the ground and on the roof. The lightning tumbles away over the hills to other farms, rivers, valleys.

It’s not yet 7 pm but something I had not even expected two hours ago has come, done its awesome thing, and gone. It’s passed over but the air is transformed – it’s cooler, fresher, more moist.

I am elated by it all – and personally refreshed and revitalized. Hopefully it will rain again, for here and for me.

Letter from Groot Marico, South Africa No. 1

Letter from Groot Marico, South Africa No. 1

For the past two months I have lived, apart from visits of a few days to Joburg, in quite an isolated area of South Africa, twenty five kilometres from our nearest village (Groot Marico). I have been a volunteer at a Tibetan Buddhist place called Tara Rokpa Centre. Tara Rokpa owns a fair amount of land in a valley of pretty hills and streams., including a big natural pool fed by a waterfall during the rainy, summer season – at present, in winter, it is a trickle although the pool is still there. Tara Rokpa’s base land is part of a farm called Rhenosterfontein (Rhino Fountain/Sprint) and we are neighboured by areas called Kuilfontein (empty/bare spring?) and Draaifontein.

The isolation comes from being on the periphery of the information society of the twenty first century. The roads around us are full of sharp stones and slate but are still in good working condition and we are either ten or 20 kilometres from the tar road depending on what direction you head. Fixed line communication is on a shared line through an exchange operator in Groot Marico and is a poor service due to people on the other end not being able to hear us clearly and the shared line causing callers not to get through to us easily or we having often to wait for the line to be free to make a call. It also means listening out for the particular ring of our number, amidst everyone else’s calls and their ringing up the exchange. One can also not access the Internet or run a fax machine via a shared line.

Cellphone reception is also almost non-existent – in order to receive and send smses (it is not sufficient for voice calls) I can walk onto the adjacent koppie (small hill) and pick up two bars of reception in one particular place. While it is quite pleasant to sit on a rock with a great view and send and receive smses, I find that naturally everyone does not reply immediately and so I toddle off back home and then they reply and find that I don’t reply for several days until I toddle back up the hill again!

We don’t have TV as broadcasts from the SABC do not reach us by ordinary means – many of our neighbours, however, do have it by buying satellite dishes and their associated services. I think radio can be picked up with difficulty but I haven’t attempted picking up a radio station.

To get cellphone, radio or TV reception you need to use a long antenna or satellite. We in the office at Tara Rokpa are fortunate that we have a cellphone booster antenna which we use to access the internet via a data card, and when we are not online can give us the limited one or two bar reception from inside on a cellphone.

So for those highly dependent on phones, smses and TV this place is a challenge. Fortunately those are not major in my life and I get by with the phone and occasional smses. I think being without email would have been a challenge for me as it is my main form of communication with friends and family. I am fairly addicted to email and the internet and this addiction may be something I need to work on.

I am sure this isolation is typical of many rural areas throughout Africa and that we are fortunate with working roads, a telephone service (with all its quirks) and access to the web, email and smses via a cellphone booster. The isolation from the metropole is proving healing for me at present, giving me space to live with myself, my faults and to listen within the silence, open spaces and fresh blue skies.

Nan Cross: 1928 - 2007

Nan Cross was a very dear friend of mine, and I was sorry to have not been able to attend her funeral as am living away from Joburg at present. Nan Cross: Supported men resisting apartheid conscription
	Published in The Sunday Times:Jul 22, 2007
Brave heart: Nan Cross, who supported conscientious objectors She was driven by a commitment to social justice that was underpinned by a quiet, unpretentious bravery. Nan Cross, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 79, popularised conscientious objection in South Africa in the ’80s. The woman who helped start the Conscientious Objector Support Group in 1980 and the End Conscription Campaign three years later was a very small person physically but had the heart of a lion. She was driven by a commitment to social justice that was underpinned by a quiet, unpretentious bravery that manifested itself in a simple refusal to be cowed. Many conscientious objectors from that decade remember her as their moral compass. But there was nothing self- righteous or self aggrandising about her. She was as down-to- earth and practical as was the advice she gave to youngsters facing what for many of them was a terrible dilemma. Cross’s Kensington, Johannesburg, home was not only an important venue for meetings. It was also where anti-apartheid activists on the run from the security police knew they could get a decent meal and bed for the night. Conscription was introduced in 1967 but it was only in about 1978 and 1979 that conscientious objectors who were not from the “peace churches”, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, began to make a stand. By the late ’80s, thanks to the efforts of Cross and a small band of volunteers who encouraged, organised, assisted and supported conscientious objectors, it had become an issue of some concern to the government. In 1983, when the End Conscription Campaign started, the penalty for refusing to do national service was increased from between 10 and 18 months in jail — with time often suspended or reduced — to a non-negotiable six years. In spite of this, the numbers of young white men refusing to fight what they saw as a war to defend apartheid increased steadily. Almost 2000 applied to the Board for Religious Objectors and more and more left the country to evade the call-up. By the late ’80s there were mass objections. In 1987, 23 conscientious objectors made a combined stand. In 1988, the number rose to 143, and in 1989, there were 771 who refused conscription. Many of them received moral as well as practical support from Cross. To stick her neck out like that in the repressive climate of the time took courage. And she was under no illusions that helping young men evade military service made her a target for the security police. Although she was never detained, she was harassed by them and interrogated several times at her home. It was broken into several times and suspicion fell heavily on the security police. The level of their interest in Cross was further demonstrated by the fact that a person who attended meetings of the conscientious objection support group at her home was subsequently exposed as a security police spy. In addition to writing pamphlets, Cross helped conscientious objectors with their statements, visited them in jail, and was a consistent source of comfort and strength for them and their families whom she supported any way she could. Although Cross had a very forceful personality, she kept out of the limelight. Extremely articulate, she was no public speaker. Yelling slogans from the podium was not for her. She did the hard, time-consuming, nitty-gritty background work that oiled the wheels of conscientious objection. A stickler for detail and getting things absolutely right, she did this necessary work with a pedantry that even those who loved and admired her often found extremely trying. As selfless and brave as she was, she could be very difficult. After 1994 Cross helped start the Ceasefire Campaign which fought for disarmament and the reduction and eventual elimination of arms trading by South Africa. Cross was born in Pretoria on January 3 1928. Her father was a lawyer for the Pretoria City Council. After matriculating at Pretoria Girls High School she completed a degree in social science at Rhodes University and embarked on life as a social worker. She worked for, among many other projects, the African Children’s Feeding Scheme and was in Soweto running the Orlando sheltered employment workshop for the Johannesburg City Council housing department on June 16 1976, when the Soweto uprising began. She never spoke much about this other than to say that getting out of the township that day was a terrifying experience. Shortly before her retirement, in order to ensure that she would qualify for a half-decent pension, she was deployed to the Johannesburg library service where she delivered books to elderly people and invalids. Cross was deeply inspired by her religion although, funnily enough given her religious pacifism and commitment to social justice, the Baptist Church of which she was a lifelong member had no “peace” tradition itself and was politically conservative. This made her a fairly isolated member of her religious community. She never married and is survived by two sisters and 15 nieces and nephews. — Chris Barron