A tale of

iI have a British friend who visits me; a jewellery designer who makes the most exquisite adornments. People from all over the world covet her jewellery pieces and pay astronomical prices for them. My friend is beautiful, eccentric – and poor, because she donates all her money to organisations involved in the rehabilitation of traumatised animals. My friend is amazing. It goes without saying that she’s a vegetarian. I don’t have a problem with making food for my vegetarian friends because I also thrive on salad and vegetables.

But my exotic, vegetarian friend has another unique characteristic: she doesn’t really eat salad. A vegetarian who doesn’t eat salad? She knows her own body, she says. She knows what’s good for her.

There’s something else Jasmine doesn’t like very much. She can’t bear the bustle of hordes of people. She lives in London and always has people around her. The place she’d really like to be is somewhere in a vast, pristine, wild landscape where the nearest people are a hundred kilometres away. She’d like to sit on a rock and meditate. She’d like to watch beetles scurrying through the veld, making little braid-like tracks in the sand behind them. She’d like to watch a sunbird sipping nectar from the cup of a plakkie bloom. And, she says, if she manages to one day see a baby giraffe, she might actually just die.

Come, I told my friend with her halo of wild black hair, I know exactly where you need to be. I took her to the Tankwa Karoo. She could not believe such a place existed. She climbed to the top of the highest hill and sat, eyes shut, on a rock for hours. She couldn’t get enough of the copper hues of the Tankwa’s winter sun, the fresh air, the ozone, the rough stones and the Vast Nothingness. She went in search of little veld creatures and followed their braid-like tracks for kilometres. She saw sunbirds sipping nectar from aloe cups. She saw baby springbok and a newborn gemsbok but, alas, no baby giraffes were to be seen with the farm’s four adult giraffes. She thought she was in heaven, and she was. While Jasmine sat on her rock, I prepared our meals. She had brinjal and lentils, broccoli with olives and basil. One night, she ate an entire bowl of pumpkin fritters; I watched with delight as she savoured them all. I cooked creamed tomatoes and cut courgette ribbons, drizzled with lemon. I roasted sweet potato on the coals. For dessert, she had farm cheese and green figs with chunks of wild melon preserve. She loved it all, devouring every morsel I put before her.

Jasmine won’t eat salad but there’s something she just couldn’t get enough of: my homemade bread. Every day, I baked her a different kind of bread. One day, I made pot bread baked in a black cast-iron pot over a slow fire. I turned the loaf out onto a weathered wooden board and spread the thick slices with farm butter which melted into the bread. My London friend thought she’d been transported to the Middle Ages, but solemnly declared that her Queen, even with all her money, would not be able to afford this treat.

The following day I made her roosterkoek (griddle cakes) cooked on the coals. That set her off, rejoicing in many tongues. The next night it was a traditional braaibroodjie, homemade farm bread with cheese, tomato and onion. She couldn’t stop giggling with delight. Lena, who lives on the farm, baked her an ash-loaf. Jasmine was unable to utter a word because she was too busy taking another bite.

On the last day of our stay in the Tankwa, the clouds started to roll in from the north-west. When the rain began to fall, I was as happy as a child receiving a gift. That night, I baked her vetkoek. I kneaded the flour, salt and yeast. The dough rose plumply under the tea towel. I lit the fire. While the rain gently soaked into the dry, dusty soil, I baked vetkoek, just like my grandmother did for us on rainy nights.

That night she uttered not a single word. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Since Jasmine’s last visit, a baby giraffe has been born on the farm. I want her to visit me again, and soon, but I don’t want her to see the

baby. I love her too much.