From Dough to Diamonds: A True Taste of South Africa

In the shade of a salt bush tree on the banks of the Orange River Mama Elisa Namases kneaded a ball of dough to make us traditional African ash bread.

A wood fire glowed red on a slab of stone, an iron cooking pot simmered vegetables, another with a stew of sheep’s head and tripe.  A troupe of baboons ran for cover when their guard barked an alarm.

After pummelling the dough and fashioning it into rolls to accompany spicy lamb chops she wiped her hands on a purple pinafore and revealed the secret of her culinary skill.  ‘I work with my brain _ I don’t measure a thing,’ she grinned.  ‘And the ash from the fire keeps your gut healthy.’

Her two lean dogs sniffed the air in anticipation, as did we.

This was an authentic taste of South Africa, thanks to a 63 year old grandmother with a history of heartache and hardship that steeled her resolve to survive and thrive by running her own modest guest house.

Her story encapsulates a chapter of South Africa’s troubled history: a brutal white government forcing the indigenous population from their land in the Northern Cape, flattening their homes, expelling them to neighbouring Namibia and the Eastern Cape, separating families, subjecting them to hopeless poverty.

‘I was just a teenager when my family was forced to move,’ Eliza told me, her usually beaming face clouding at the memory.  ‘Old people dropped dead with heart attacks when their homes were bulldozed.

‘We were promised houses and schools, and land for our animals.  Instead we had tents and no schools.  It rained cats and dogs.

‘The lions ate our goats and donkeys, and the elephants flattened our crops.

‘I was 17 when I left and 57 when I moved back to the land where I was born and bred.’

The massive 200 year old camel thorn tree in her drought-dry garden was half its present 10 metres when her family was expelled. Now 3 metres of its roots are exposed by soil erosion from strong winds that once whipped the roof from her Damas Guest House, an enterprise that has propelled Elisa to chairperson of the regional small businesses economic organisation.

Undeterred she soldiers on alone. Abandoned by her husband for a younger model, saying: ‘You are  too old,’ she lives alone, next to the graveyard where many relations lie and where she wishes to be buried.

‘Sometimes I feel I will run away,  But no, I will complete the guest house I have slowly built for everybody, for travellers who ask where they can eat.

‘When you are not happy you need to go back to your mother’s house, to smell the smoke and eat her bread, even when she is no longer there.’

We returned to rather more luxurious accommodation at Khamkirri River camp where we canoed down rapids for 3 km. under the imperious gaze of fish eagles and Goliath heron, sipped sundowners on a more sedate barge river cruise before hearty campfire fare.

The camp, with its thatched lodges on stilts, was well sited to visit the Augrabies Falls, named ‘place of great noise’ by the early Khoi inhabitants for its thundering Orange River waters plunging 56 meters into a granite gorge.  No bungee action in this national park.

Just a family of Rock Hyrax sunning themselves, rodents called elephant rats because of a genetic link to the jumbo.  And a massive straw nest of the sociable weaver bird, which builds its communal home up high away from snakes, and so heavy they bring down telephone poles.

The Big Five were never on our itinerary but it was a thrill to spot zebra, gorilla, springbok, seals, ibis, and ostriches that would give the wild horses a run for their money. The last species I expected to encounter in the Western Cape was penguins.  But there they were, far from the Antarctica, on sunny Boulders Beach, doing a passable impression of waddling waiters before diving, sleek as arrows, into Atlantic rollers.

South Africa is a land of contrasts: forests, mountains, waterfalls and wine lands, cosmopolitan cities and townships, nomadic farmland and national parks,  coastal dunes and desert, diamond and copper mines.  We dipped our toes in all.

We drove through the Majestic Quiver tree forest (its timber used for tribesmen’s arrows, storing food and building huts),  near the Kamies Mountains in whose shadow we visited a nomadic herders’ post and ‘helped’ the bushmen mill grain for delicious bread.

The diet of the sheep farmer who invited us to lunch was richer. ‘Welcome to red meat land,’ chuckled Bertu Archer, whose family have farmed here for six generations. ‘That’s what we eat three times a day.  If we want a salad we kill a chicken or pig.’

To make his point he produced a roast lamb’s head from his kitchen range, prised open its jaw _ ‘it’s OK, I cleaned its teeth’_   to carve the tongue then cracked the skull to extract the brain.  Our Vegan friend blanched.  I tucked into this delicacy, including chewy lambs’ tails.  And I don’t mean leaves.

There’s still evidence of the country’s natural resources.  Copper, or fools’ gold, was mined at Okiep  where a Cornish-made beam pump stands redundant. The local Okiep Country Hotel was originally a hostel for mining managers, and there’s a rich history as evidenced in sepia photographs and a document dated 1911 detailing a staggering profit of £1,172,325. 14 shillings and 3 pence.

From copper to diamonds we headed for the Diamond Coast on the Northern Cape,  a hostile, rugged land where illegal diamond diggers risk imprisonment for trying to eke a living finding gems.

The area, 100km west of Springbok, is heavily policed, with spotter planes combing the coast to spot dodgy diggers.  You enter only when accompanied by a mining company official and our every  movement was monitored on arrival at Noup Camp, primitive accommodation once used by mining officials.  When the generator was switched off we relied on hurricane lamplight, candles, hot water bottles and log fire. Showers were, to put it kindly, erratic.

Our stone-clad asbestos and corrugated iron cottages were blasted by Atlantic winds and spray from crashing waves and swirling currents that have shipwrecked many a mariner.  Rusting hulks litter the shore, stark testament to the ocean’s power. Cape weather, they say, is like a baby: windy or wet.

But the spectacular sunset, ink black skies, sparkling starlight and silver moon made up for any lack of modern conveniences.  And the braai dinner _ South African word for BBQ _ with fruity wines was a treat.

As was the dinner cooked by Abigail Mbalo, a Master Chef contestant who ditched her dental technician career to open a 4Roomed eKasi Culture & Foods enterprise in Khayelitsha township on the outskirts of Cape Town.

This inspirational mother of two mixes fine dining, quirky décor and nostalgia for the home she spent her youth.  She’s an award winner with a passion for food and social cohesion, determined to leave her mark. ‘When I’m gone my soul can look down on this and see the legacy I’ve left,’ she said.

Both she and Mama Elisa have both left their mark on me as symbols of hope for the future of South Africa.

• For more information on Naturetrek holidays see https://www.naturetrek.co.uk and for more information on visiting South Africa visit: www.southafrica.net