Sala Sentle: From Ooskaap to Vrystaat

After visiting tannie Elsa and oom Nica we drive on to their son Nick and Zandre in Smithfield. Smithfield was founded in 1848 when the then Cape Colony governor, Sir Harry Smith (1847-1852), required a settlement north of the Oranje Rivier. Smithfield is the third oldest village in the Vrystaat.

Since it's almost X-mess, Nick & Zandre asked Bram & Henk-i to fittingly decorate the windows of their shop.

about Smithfield

more Smithfield

Nick & Zandre have a brandnew supermarket in Smithfield, another one in die lokasie, a butchery, a take-away food operation, and a bottle store coming up. Running your own supermarkets and other shops means working effin’ hard; round the clock, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. So if you want to hang out with them, it’s best to join the shop-running. Maud had a fun (for her) day getting stock with Nick from the wholesale in Bloemfontein and a couple of other places.

‘Lekker Alleen’ (working title) team brekfes meeting... So what if we want cake for brekfes, so what if we wanna spice up our morning coffees, so what if we feel the need to shoot something after a good night’s sleep? The ‘Lekker Alleen’ person enjoys doing whatever (s)he likes whenever (s)he feels like doing it.

We sure had a lot of fun working on our concept for having fun being on your own (websites, tele shows, magazines and more coming up:-).

Artist Henk-i is the big attraction of the day!
We all tried to speak English but it’s hard! Even Dutch is okay; Zandre is fluent cause he lived in Amsterdam about 1.5 year, and Nick picked up quite a bit thanks to his Dutch friends. But still - on top of the fact that Maud loves to speak Afrikaans and has little chance to do so, it is such a habit to use mainly Afrikaans when we are staying with Nick & Zandre. Besides, almost everyone around here speaks Afrikaans, and Sesotho, and / or Xhosa. Note: no English in this list.And note: Dutch people tend to be really ignorant when it comes to assessing Afrikaans. It’s not baby Dutch; it’s a beautiful full-grown language. And it’s the mother tongue for many and all sorts of people.

Afrikaans is native to many people

Now that they can’t go to the Joburg gyms anymore, Zandre & Nick have build themselves a gym at home. They neither have time to use it nor need it – as Maud experienced while restocking being a shop owner is real heavy work. But Bram & Henk-i sure can use a workout – daily is more effective guys! Maud's credo: it's better to be comfortable then to keep up appearances.

Another part of the job is deliveries. At the end of the day there is a sizeable bakkieload to deliver in the lokasie, and for his next workout Bram joins Zandre and Boesman to bring people their stuff. It happens to be a real stormy evening, so balancing their loads on the slippery, muddy tracks in the township is not an easy job.

about lokasies

township entrepreneurs