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.