Rivers Dance
Rivers Dance
Elements #1: An Odyssey through South Africa's arteries
It's an hour after an early summer sunrise. The beach is bare, the walk down from our stop last night challenging, partly because my companion needs to step gently: she's got nausea and didn't sleep, probably from some of the water that last night's favourite South African sticky orange flavour drink was diluted in. And now we realise there's an estuary to cross, and it's six long hours till low tide. We walk up and down seeking driftwood branches, tying them together with duct tape to make a makeshift raft. It's big enough to swim over to the next beach with our belongings, cushioned from the waves by two layers of black bags. And then, elation. And a discovery on the far side of some pre-tied plastic drums, a little late for us - what the locals use, more prepared for tidal fluctuations than we are. The rivers of the Transkei region are one of the many challenges of this part of the Eastern Cape province.
The rivers are often exquisite too. Our first day of this multi-day hike we got a gentle ferry across, sedately watching the lush trees on a river island, before trudging up another scenic hill, atop which shepherd boys sat chewing grass and whiling away the day. Plenty of poverty here, of course, and the orange drink from a homestay supper was a reminder of that. We wander through, mlungu backpackers stepping away from Cape Town comforts to a world where the potholes breed. The Xhosa kids know the English word for sweets but when we don't give any they lose interest and get on with their lives.
On our last day trekking we reach Bulungula, a delightful hostel next to another river (waded across in the afternoon when the tide is lower), where there are genuine opportunities for locals, although also still a village headman drinking too much Black Label loudly. The soccer playing kids seem healthier round here; a little direct connection from the community-minded backpackers, support, reminder of the strengths the locals once had and could have again - all seems to go a long way. Yet throughout the Transkei we see very few crops being grown, a few mielies here and there: wealth and status is traditionally based around livestock. A warped patriarchal view sometimes is heard, that women grow vegetables so they can't be worth much. Warped because this can't have been the old way - too much is known about local vegetables, even if they've often been supplanted by Western upstarts. Changing these attitudes, reconnecting with the land, taking charge of food production again - this is essential for the future, and possible, in networks of communities.
On a previous day we crossed another river, with lots of other travellers and only a little swimming, behind the Hole in the Wall, that Transkei sight so beloved of tourists. There are plenty in the Transkei this year: some at surprisingly fancy beach resorts; some we chat with are Zulu speakers, like us seeing fresh parts of the country. The communities are separated by hillsides and river catchments: geography is still the ruler, in this inaccessible region. Probably a little like Ethiopia, never conquered because its challenging terrain, all sheer drops and river crossings, kept it protected. The Transkei has had its fair share of interlopers but it's still a cultural heartland, even if it needs the kind of help the greedy city men can't be bothered with.
In the eastern part of South Africa, rivers like these are frequent, giving rise to rich landscapes and, where properly looked after, incredibly fecund vegetable gardens. We visit some and are inspired at the permaculture community gardens in Khula Dhamma, just west of the Kei river, which makes the absence in the Transkei proper more noticeable and tragic. Of course, rivers can be home to nasty surprises: in the Dwesa nature reserve here, when my eldest child was a toddler, we walked up to see the river from a safe distance, for it was crocodile territory. We preferred the mischievous vervet monkeys, cackling from the well watered trees in the campsite, but still, the intense presence and awareness in a crocodile, so at ease with flowing waters, is worthy of much respect. Further north in Zululand and Mpumalanga, other rivers watched from safe hides and bespoke terraces have their own smaller dangers, the mystery of the malaria zone a constant boogeyman, though when taking my girls there a few years back we took advice on herbs from frequent travellers and trusted our instincts.
The western half of the country is a different story. Once you leave behind the deep tannins in the forest waters of the Western Cape’s Garden Route, there are many paths where rivers rarely flow, much dryness, and their fresh presence is usually seen as bordering on heavenly - or Eden, as the Garden Route calls its chief municipality! Rivers? We know them mostly for the little blue signs on the road indicating that, after big rains, you might really be crossing one.
Yet rivers are the veins of a landscape, and here in the dry west, they are channels we rely on intensively. The desert bursts into green up in the north of the pristine Richtersveld, when the flood plain of the Orange changes everything. It's a strange name, though there are plenty of orange hues in the nearby rocks even if none in the river itself: a Dutch relic, along with carrots they grew in the national colour and then made the world think was the natural order of things. The Oranje snakes along through the dry rocks, like I imagine the Nile does, allowing birds to congregate and rafters to cool off in the heat of the desert day. Where there are natural borders in Africa, it's usually rivers like this one or the Limpopo that mark the divide, even name the territory: the old Transvaal, the Transkei, the Congo whose two capitals sit looking at each other without a bridge over the mighty waters. Here this river cares not for the false name it was given. Far away from cellphones and tar roads, deep into mountains that will get you lost and parched in no time at all; carrying its precious load thousands of kilometres, though still not giving rise to much in the way of vegetables. A few days rafting on the Orange gave me time to write, to relax, even while in charge of busy teens, to find shade and cool off and be forced to take my time: the old way to travel, so much more attuned to natural rhythms. And its flow gentle enough for a capsize to be an adrenaline rush more than a crisis.
Some years back, down in the small Western Cape winter rainfall region we were saving every drop. Now we have just passed through the most intense downpour and I felt firsthand what these arteries need to remind us of: the supremacy of the land and natural forces, and the need to connect with them and be prepared. I sat in my car, my only provisions some spring water and a few dried fruits, as the last route back to Cape Town that was still open closed off with flood waters breaching the bridge.
Then I became aware of a change in mood on the road; that admirable South African ability to cut through the crap and get on with each other and act quickly in times of crisis (which we're not short of). Motorists seeking information, assisting each other, turning around and shunting back to the previous town of Robertson. I had tracked down a friend and got to stay in their wonderful little mountain getaway, where a massive (but pretty harmless) rain spider in the bathroom was the only noticeable company. The next day, the flood damage impressively visible, but the road cleared and opened, and traffic police in Worcester working with palpable pride, at least for a day, to make sure the massive and unusual traffic flow could get through the town quickly to the national highway at last.
And so back to Cape Town, the Cape of Storms if you sail past in the wrong season. Hundreds of shipwrecks are said to be buried beneath the Foreshore, the business district on land reclaimed from the ocean with poured cement. For some terrible arcane reason, the city’s residents decided in the mid-20th century to turn many of its rivers into fake canals, in other words to pour concrete onto river beds and force the water into sterile confines. In the early days of the city there were many rivulets pouring off the mountain, and the main streets as a consequence bear the names of Amsterdam canals, from the days when there were streams down their centre. The British covered the streams over completely as another questionable public health measure in the nineteenth century (as well as blaming black workers for an outbreak of bubonic plague, and moving them to the first true township in the city, Langa, back in the 1900s).
By contrast, any biodynamic farmer will tell you that water that is allowed to churn naturally, spiralling over rocks on its route downwards, folds in life energy. The fresh taste of such waters in the mountains, before encountering human residues, is delicious; I'm lucky enough to get spring water free, too, from public taps set up to capture the fresh rush off Table Mountain. Not enough of the old sources operate: many springs remain underused, allowed to run underground to the sea, with the occasional pesticide runoff added en route. Nineteenth century Cape Town had electric lights fuelled by hydroelectric power, long since forgotten; there is a proud heritage here at Camissa, the 'place of sweet waters' as those distant indigenous pastoralists called my city, which means more for our future than all the braaiing in Heritage Month (September). Southern Africa's traditional healers will bow before the waters: thanking them for their grace and respecting their power. We used to know that rivers were gods. The world and its grasping water-bottling-and-polluting businesses could do with learning a little of that humility, remembering the crystalline structure, the magic, the potent flow, the ever-shifting dance.