The petrol light blinks red at me 60 km outside of Grahamstown and I travel through the passes on the way into the university city anxiously wondering how big the reserve tank is and at what point I am going to come to a standstill in the middle of the road. Luckily I make it into the first garage before that happens.
My lodgings for the night have not yet been finalized and Justine Weeks has kindly offered to let me use her home as a waiting place to catch up on blogging, and to wait for further info from FTTSA. I manage to track down someone at Kwam eMakana (an organization that manages a number of Homestays in Grahamstown) who is expecting me and head off to find my contact in the late afternoon.
Vuyane at the Makana Tourism centre (near the great Cathedral that dominates the city’s main road) introduces me to Mandi, the son of the woman whose house I will be staying at tonight.
I really like Mandi. He is confident, has strong opinions about things and knows a lot about his beloved home city. “Ahhh Grahamstown”¦” he says as we head into the location that begins not far off from the city centre. “I love this place. When I am away for three, even for one day I miss her.” Mandi is in his early 20s and has been unemployed for some time. We get to Esibayeni Homestay (meaning “˜we are together) and he helps me inside where I meet his mother, a shy but smiley lady known as Ntsike (Nontsikelelo Futa). She tells me I am the first guest she has had since June – the last Arts Festival. Mandi and I read through a sheaf of job application forms he has collected from the Municipality and try making sense of the various job titles. He is heading out of town for a wedding tomorrow but wants to drop these forms along with his CV and references at the relevant offices before he leaves.
It’s still too early for dinner so I ask Mandi to take a drive with me up to the 1820 Settlers Monument to enjoy the view at sunset. Grahamstown is a place I spent a fair amount of time in during my High School years, coming to the Arts Festival each winter. It’s changed a lot since I was last here in 1990. It has grown, sprawling outwards. The once small township is now large, and growing. Somewhere out there Mandi’s mother, like so many other women, is cooking dinner in her small home. Mandi tells me about some of the history of Grahamstown. He knows quite a lot and I tell him that I think he’d make an excellent tour guide. He seems to really like this idea and says he will find out about courses from Vuyani.
We drive back to the Homestay, via the oldest post box in South Africa for a quick photo op, and I eat a big plate of chicken, potatoes and dumplings while watching Generations with Ntsike and Mandi.
In the morning I take a tour of Grahamstown townships with Nondwe Nkohla who is one of the board members of Kwam eMakana. I find this township very confusing to drive – so many streets! We start by visiting Egazini Art and Craft Centre which is housed in a large brick building that was once a place where the Apartheid era police carried out some of their despicable methods of torture. Egazini means “˜place of blood’ in reference to the Battle of Grahamstown. At the entrance a mosaic of stones now greets us with the word PEACE. Here I speak with Vukile Teyise, manager of Egazini and one of 8 artists who, together with historians Professors Julie Wells and Giselle Ballie, put together an exhibition of art works back in 2000 during the arts festival that year. After the festival they decided to look for a place where the spirit of the original exhibition could be continued and today it is still an ongoing project. Artists meet here to create mostly lithographic art, much of which is a representation of some of the history of the city. He shows me one mounted image which depicts a small head with a large white disc on top, and he smiles. “The artist who made this, after he heard all about the history of Grahamstown it gave him a headache so this shows a head with a disprin.” Other prints are more clearly representative of battle scenes or symbolism around various historical events. In a back room two older women are cutting small prints into greeting cards for selling – the same as those I saw at the Amakhala Craft Centre. Prints are also made into aprons, tea towels and various other items, also for sale in this building. An exciting development occurred in 2003 when a gallery in the USA began ordering work on consignment which is sold in dollars. Artists are paid but 20% is kept to help fund the ongoing work at Egazini.
Walking back along the corridor, it’s hard to imagine that where large, striking artworks now hang, people were heinously tortured in the not all that distant past. I love that this place of suffering has become a place of artistic expression, and of hope.
The rest of the morning passes quickly. We visit Umthathi, an NGO project under the directorship of Marlene Michener, where community members can come to be taught organic gardening and permaculture skills to grow vegetables and herbs in small gardens or containers, for their own use or to sell. Business skills are also part of the training on offer.
We drop in at a community old age home and meet a few of the residents. This place is small and not in great shape, but clean with all bedroom doors opening to a grassy courtyard where one of the residents grows vegetables for use in the kitchens.
Finally we drive to a large piece of open land on the outskirts of the locations, where a violent tribal war took place in the 1800s. For Nondwe and many others this is a sacred place. There are plans to build a small monument and info centre here for visitors to learn about what took place here, but for now it is simply an open field, haunted by a violent past.
Ahhh Grahamstown – in my mind it’s always been a fun, colourful city because all my memories of this place are tied up with the Arts Festival, and of being carefree and young. I leave with a much more sober feeling, my old cheerful memories now bleached with the realities of the hardships of life for many of people who live here.
Find out more:
Kwam eMakana
Makana Tourism
Egazini Arts Centre
To see specials at these places and similar, go to Abang Africa
Learn more about FTTSA
Join FTTSA on Facebook
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