WWS again

Professor Gerhard se Mansion

Potch Party

Cell-numbers

April 22 - May 1 we'll be in South Africa. Our RSA cell numbers are:
Bram (+27) 768358656
Maud (+27) 765604009
May 2 we'll be back in Europe for five months, and use our Ducth cell numbers.
We'll keep you posted!

Achterhoek

Andre’s Dutch school-friends before they tried the entire range of local beers Andre’s wife Tears bought them. So if they look a bit tired, it’s because they just arrived. Knowing Andre left the Achterhoek in 1977 to go to Tanzania, and than came to Botswana in 1979, it’s amazing they still stick together!

Napping

The first cold winter day, only 26 degrees Celsius in the heat of the day, we really need jogging-pants & jumpers. And, after attending a wedding starting 05:00 a.m., a nap to be refreshed for our next event: a braai at Andre’s to welcome his seven friends from the Achterhoek (a region in the far, far east of the Netherlands).
At the wedding Maud even had to borrow an extra plaid from one of the ladies, because she only brought a summer blanket.

Sweatshop

Colourful elephant t-shirts: design & screen-printing Hardy
Curtains: design & production Maud
Elephant cloth & cushions: design Maud & Bram, production Maud
Achterhoek t-shirts: design Bram, screen-printing Anthea

Sun Design – whatever you want, we get it produced.
Almost whatever: due to the time-consuming production-technique Maud’s elephant-thing probably is a ‘once only’ for Bram’s office-couch (sorry, the spot where brilliant ideas are developed).

After

“I survived a Dutch pancake-party.”

Exercise

Having stomached two festive dinners in a row, Jeff & Bram decide they need some exercise. So Easter Monday they drive to the quarry with some of Jeff’s recently pimped up guns, a six-pack (it’s supposed to be the targets) and Mr Jones junior to sweat it all out.
As I’m writing this they return, so lets watch the video. – They really shot the beers instead of drinking them. Result-wise it’s like the mekgoa fishing-trips: these white people are useless; they come home without any food. No need to clean the big cooking pots when they go hunting, like our neighbour does. Her son at least returns with a load of game that keeps her cooking for days.

The Joneses

Easter Sunday LJ & Dineo cook up their specialty: LJ’s dumplings and a beautiful stew. We must get LJ drunk and wriggle out his secret dumpling-recipe – they’re too beautiful to keep it classified.
It’s a pity we leave just before their wedding party! Judging from the piles of firewood in their yard and the stress-build-up it will be a major event.
By the way, Jones junior will soon be on Botswana-television; he’s being interviewed about the planes he makes out of scrap in his dad’s carpentry. Among other things Seppo invented an ingenious way to make smoothly working propellors - very interesting to meet a young genius!

Pancakes

Once again we’re busy, busy, busy with a series of ‘so long’-parties. To give ours a Dutch touch we decided on pancakes. A pancake-restaurant could make good money here; the mountain we produced looked like we would eat pancakes all week, but the leftovers could barely feed the neighbour’s puppy.
We should have realised inviting Hamish means you have to hire a watertight party-tent. Halfway the party the rain started to poor down like the Flood, and the small boat Hamish carries around on his bakkie is a far cry from Noah’s ark. The good thing about Batswana is rain never spoils a party. Everyone is ever so happy it rains, saying ‘Ah, this is marvellous, let’s pray it rains all night’.

Rhino’s

Eina, we have to stay at the rhino sanctuary again. Two days of driving around with a game warden to take pictures for their slideshow – imagine the kind of jobs we have to do to survive! Still can’t say we long for Europe’s concrete jungle, to say the least.

Wild Dogs

The days are still warm, but the nights get colder and colder. Even a fierce, almost wild hunting-dog must humble itself and look for some warmth.

Rebecca

Without Rebecca Judith’s household would fall apart. She cleans, washes, irons, looks after the kids, and etcetera. Her spicy French toast has one fault: it’s so appetizing you’ll eat yourself to dead. That’s a flaw with her food in general by the way.
Like Maud Rebecca loves watching 7de Laan, Binnelanders, made in South Africa soaps in general, and she’s good company. She makes us look posh; Maud isn’t allowed to out without painting all her nails first, and Bram’s once white shirts are white again (this truly is a miracle).
Rebecca is a prime example that access to education must be South Africa’s number 1 priority. She’s intelligent, outspoken, witty, ambitious – but like so many others stuck in this underpaid domestic job without much chance to escape.

Music

As I’m writing this it’s already April 2 and we’ve only 20 Morwa-days left before we go to Pretoria again, but we still owe you some of our past South-African adventures.
During our stay in Pretoria we met Lib, and had a delicious braai at his place. After loitering in his yard we’re sure: if we succeed in buying our Morwa-mansion, we’ll create one of those ‘braai in de middle, benches circling around the fire’-places. We enjoyed such a fire-pit in Kaapstad and Pretoria now, and it’s fabulous.
Being in the music-business Lib can add some fire to the fire with a live concert and a huge Boerbull. We’ll have to make do with crickets and half-wild Tswana dogs.

Theo’s Heaven

As always Louis managed to arrange an abfab special outing with a couple of Potch-palls, this time wining & dining at Theo’s game-farm. Imagine being just 10 minutes away from Potchefstroom, in the South African setting a fairly big and busy town, in the middle of nature and game!
Don’t know who enjoyed the game-drive more, the hunting-dog or us people. Same goes for the braai. The eclipse later that night was lost on the dog, but we loved it, all laying on our backs in the grass, listening to the sounds of the wild, and seeing the moon go.

Dordrecht

It’s that time of the year: shaving the sheep. Nick’s dad comes down form the plaats with a bakkie full of wool that has to be sold. We join him to the beautiful village of Dordrecht to see if the wool-trader still is in business. On the way we pass a couple of once nice farmhouses – now mostly empty because, when the old people die, the kids want to cash and go to town. Oom Nico tempts us to buy a plaats – it’s a pity there won’t be any business for a design-company in this area...
In Dordrecht, oom’s place of birth, we get a good price at the wool-company, which we celebrate that evening with Klippies & Coke – and as always an appetizing farmers-dinner.

Klein Karoo

Driving from the coast to Jamestown, we cross the Klein Karoo. Gradually the landscape changes, promising our beloved Lesotho mountains are near.

Garden Route

Okay, although it sucks, it is beautiful. The coastline, the bays, the rocks, the Indian Ocean – it’s really stunning. Imagine how nice Victoria Baai must have been when there were no people around yet...

Where are we?!

Are we awake? We are in South Africa, aren’t we? Judging from the surroundings we are in - Austria? No, they don’t have hectares and hectares of apple-trees over there.
In between the Groot Karoo and the coast the landscape changes, and changes, and changes – you travel the world in just a few hours. Look, pine, look, lakes, look, pears, look grapes, look, see, look.

Groot Karoo

Although we couldn’t camp in Groot Karoo National Park because of the marathon, we spend a day in the park after the race. This landscape has an eerie beauty. It’s fierce, harsh, seemingly barren, but full of life. Not only long ago life, with loads of fossils to show for it, but also zebra’s, antelopes, owls, eagles, and etcetera, almost invisible in the moonlike, very much alive landscape.

Ibrahim & Abraham

Wild Tswana puppies…

Design Indaba

Next to the DutchMatch we are in Kaapstad to go to the international Design Indaba. We have mixed feelings about this event. The 3 days long series of lectures is very interesting, but far from international: it’s a pure Caucasian event. Where are the Asian, African, and Latin American designers? Not among the speakers and hardly among the listeners. Okay, finally the organisation brings in an Afro-American, and who is he? The clown who does the finale, a very good one (recommended by Brian Eno, yeah, we saw him lecturing on Art), but still...
Furthermore, it’s perverse to see too big mountains of super luxury food and drinks. Especially knowing Khayaletshia, Kaapse Vlakte is around the corner. Okay, they threw in the ‘conscientious’ closing day, with lectures of Zapiro (now run to a bookstore and buy whatever you can from the hand of this brave, sharply analysing mind) and various other ‘design if you give a damn’ speakers.

More networking

For the third networking event we were invited to the house of Harry Poortman, a Dutchman who sold his design office and moved to Kaapstad. A hard job again, loitering in Harry’s wondrous property high up the mountain, eating excellent food, drinking good wine, and networking.
While being painted as a Zulu warrior (Bram) and Zulu princess (Maud) we met Mohammed, member of the South-African Design Council and a fellow vegetarian. This doubles Maud’s veggie soul mates in southern Africa (will post Skobi’s portrait soon). When we’re in Joburg end of April we aim to have a veggie get together with Mo.
After the event at Harry’s (who by the way runs a B&B, so if you ever hit Kaapstad...) we skipped the big, meaning BIG, Indaba-party. The final get-together was at Joost’s, another Dutch designer who stepped out as partner from his office and escaped to Africa with his wife Emmy. Sorry, we don’t have a picture of the again beautiful property, food and wine, so we can only write it was another evening of hard, very hard work.

Networking again

Being in Kaapstad of course one of the networking events had to be a wine-tour. This time we met Marcel Maré, a very nice guy who teaches at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria. By now Bram has given a guest-lecture there, and we’re trying to organize a workshop in October. The design-students at Pretoria University, where Bram already does workshops, are predominantly white and female (the last not necessarily being a disadvantage for Bram), while Tshwane University offers a far more mixed student-population. Being party-animals we of course also grabbed our chance at going out with Marcel and having fun.

Networking

How come we are on a navy-ship – and not just any old navy-vessel, but the Dutch marine flagship? De Tromp happened to be in Kaapstad, on its way from Hawaii to the Netherlands. So what better place to organize the first DutchMatch networking event? We agree, it’s a shit job, this networking, but someone has to do it...
Being used to very basic sailors food, the Indonesian rijsttafel the navy cook managed to throw together was a pleasant surprise. Even more pleasant was that we finally found Peet Pienaar, an excellent, innovative South-African designer, and could make an appointment to visit his studio.