This is Africa . . .

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Today I left Coffee Bay and now I am in Port St. Johns, another small village on the coast, 100km off the highway. The entire 1 ½ hour drive from Coffee Bay to the highway, then 1 ½ drive from the highway to Port St Johns, I just watched the countryside roll by. I did the same yesterday, when riding back to the hostel from Hole in the Wall.

All along, I repeatedly thought to myself THIS is Africa. Of course, all I’ve been seeing and experiencing is Africa. But this is the Africa of fantasies.

This is the place of folklore, of National Geographic, of rural life in traditional homes, of culture.

This is where for 100 kilometres, you pass nothing but farmland, and not farmland like home, but where animals freely graze, not a fence in sight. Where there are no machines to process the land. Where the land is immense but the farms are small, because people can only do so much, especially on such un-farmable land (which is why the Apartheid state gave the land here over to the blacks).

This is where colonization, apartheid and freedom have effected the people, but have done little to change how the people live. A place that has been left behind while the rest of the world has charged on.

People live here the way they always have - they’ve had no other choice. Women work around the houses with babies strapped to their backs. Men push wheelbarrows up the steep road, or lie napping in the fields. Teenagers walk through the fields, carrying buckets of water on their heads. An elderly man and woman stop along the road to talk, both dressed in clothes warm enough for a mild Canadian winter day, though it is about 25 degrees Celsius and sunny. Children wave to the cars that drive past - few do.

My favourite sight today: a young child, barely bigger than a baby, hardly walking, stands in her front yard looking at her belly button; she is completely naked except a wool hat on her head.

This is Africa.

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