OUR SAFARI NORTHWARD

Our “trek” to the north could be called a “safari” with a clear conscience. The scenery was spectacular, reminding us of that which we had seen in New Mexico. We learned later that the area was called the “Karoo,” semi-desert in America it would be called a desert, though there were farms, some times twenty miles apart, or even more. The roads were very poorly maintained of gravel and usually filled with potholes and corrugations. In those days, everyone drove at “safe and reasonable” legal speeds, often somewhere in the vicinity of seventy miles an hour. At that speed the vehicle only hits the tops of the corrugations, and much of the dust is left behind. The dust and the heat are unbearable. Just open the windows and keep rolling, fast! As there were no fences, it was necessary to keep a close watch that there were no sheep or cattle on the road, or even very near. This was particularly important at night when animals often lay down on the road to sleep. Since the only fences were usually at the borders of the farm, all traffic had to stop there to open, and be sure to close, the gates.



Clouds of dust usually announced that a car was coming, so if there were African houses near the gate, there would nearly always be a group of little children who came running to open the gate and beg for pennies. It was several years before these main roads were eventually asphalted and cattle gates replaced the ordinary farm gates. This dust was particularly bad for poor little Ruth’s well being and we were very concerned for her.

As this first leg of our trip was several hundred miles, we stopped at a hotel for our meals and spent the night at the half way mark. We arrived in Kimberley at the end of the second day, and spent a few days in the home of Bill and Melba Rees. It was Bill who was showing us the way. Though there were not too many places one could go wrong. There were, of course, forks in the road which sometimes had no signs. Those signs were favorite tarbets for bored travellers to shoot at. Many were destroyed or the poles eaten away by termites. Termite nests were everywhere and were sometimes several feet tall.

Kimberley, a small city, had two missionary families, the Rees family, and that of Max Ward Randall family. The mission work had originated and spread through the coming and going of the African workers in the mine compounds about fifty years before and it was at Kimberley that the first school for the training of ministers was being established. The Africans considered it to be the "mother church."

Kimberley itself, was the result of diamonds having been discovered there several years before. Of course there was a diamond rush, which drew people from all over the world to rush in and set up a tent city in the old wild-west fashion of America. It was, and is still, rather a cosmopolitan city made up of English, or Afrikaans speaking Europeans, and mostly Xhosa, Tswana, or a smattering of Zulu speaking Africans. To add variety to the mix, there were also the Griquas, the Coloureds, and the Indians, and Chinese. The Chinese were at first brought in to work underground since Africans were not happy to go deep underground at first. The Indians were brought from India to work in the sugar cane plantations near the Indian Ocean coast, because the Africans were terrified of snakes and scorpions. That is understandable, Africa’s snakes are deadly, including black or green mambas, "boom- slungs“, vipers, cobras, and adders, while the python is also common though not poisonous. Black Africans often considered the python to be Satan, and are convinced that it could be there and be either visible or invisible. They nearly always surround their house with a wide hardened and swept area.

The Randall family, worked mainly with the African, Griqua, and Coloured peoples, and the Rees family with the Chinese. The Rees family, later went to China to work in Hong Kong. They spent the rest of their active working lives there.

After a few days recuperation, especially for Ruth, we continued our travel, this time, first westward, then north again after we had crossed the border into South West Africa. Our destination was the capital city, Windhoek. South West Africa, is now an independent nation and has been renamed Namibia after one of the African tribes who live there.