Getting wild about a name
Trans the Kei is where you find the real deal Whenever I hear anyone talk about the Wild Coast, I think of the 280km shoreline of the former Transkei in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, which stretches like a
Category: Eastern Cape
What a ride
Meet the inventor of the sidecar ambulance and clinic The road has been long and winding – from a north London workshop on a chilly morning into the imagination of a Saudi prince, on to the rural home of Nelson
The anatomy of a scapegoating
Motorbike sidecar ambulances and clinics are one of the best things to come out of the Eastern Cape. Yet certain quarters are trying their best to bludgeon the life out of this initiative that reaches into the heart of rural
The mask makers of Rhodes Village and Zakhele
Celebrating ordinary people emerging as heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic Long before the dust started settling on the mask-or-not debate, people in Rhodes Village and its Zakhele township in the mountains near the South Africa-Lesotho border were crossing old barriers
Strange tastes indeed
Why do we consider eating snails from our garden and get excited about finding wild mushrooms? Are we remembering a time when we survived by foraging? Are we yearning for it? “Kowa!” I yell and tip the mushroom to view
Taking a walk with Nomama Mei
Nomama Mei and I are walking, and talking, along the shore of the Kwelera Nature Reserve, now part of the new Kwelera National Botanical Garden. Mid-sentence, she crouches and strokes a plant with wide, green leaves, just emerging from the
Jewels of the bush
Not long after we moved to East London, I found myself wending my car along a dusty farm track. I was searching for a nursery I’d heard about, one with a great variety of bromeliads, indigenous bulbs and clivia. Suddenly,
In search of the lemonwoods
Up. The thin path winds through the forest, up and up the mountain. And we keep going. V and I are searching for the grove of lemonwood trees that we’ve heard about. We’re not even sure that we are on
Go native
Down here in South Africa, especially along the coast, we seem to have a perpetual fixation with palm trees. I know, I know … we’re trying to evoke a sense of being on a tropical island. Or something. But it’s
50-something shades of blue
Fifty shades of grey? Not a chance. I am confronted with 50 shades of blue, at least 50, every day. Sometimes it seems that I have seen all 59 shades of blue (that’s apparently how many there were at last