Getting by with help from friends
ISUZU KB250: REGARDED IN THE KAROO AS A ‘LEGEND’
After 320 000km of hard driving, Karoo Space bakkie is given an overhaul.
Sometime back in 2003, I was standing toe to toe with a Sutherland sheep farmer after his deeply rutted middelmannetjie road nearly ripped the guts out of our low-slung sedan.
We’d come to do a magazine story on some aspect of the guy’s farming enterprise, but the issue of his bad road took precedence and we ended up yelling at each other.
As much as I hate to admit it, he had the last word: “Get yourself a blerry bakkie, man!” he shouted as he turned and stormed back into the shearing shed.
So the next week I walked into a dealership in Sandton and not long after, I drove out in a brandnew metallic-grey Isuzu KB250 double-cab bakkie. It was (and still is) the kind of vehicle that wants to leave the city traffic and head out into the open road.
We then began to criss-cross southern Africa, gathering material for four travel books: A Drink of Dry Land, Namibia Space, Shorelines and Coast to Coast.
In a Karoo Space
In 2007, the bakkie, my wife Julienne du Toit and I came to live in the Eastern Cape river town of Cradock, and began to tell the story of the heartland in the form of magazine articles and the Karoo Keepsakes series of books.
The bakkie took on the brand name flashed across its canopy: Karoo Space.
We had, in the meantime, become Karoo smouse, in the tradition of the old Jewish traders who used to traverse the dry country.
Before a trip, the bakkie would be loaded with book stocks to drop off at little padstalle and outof-the-way coffee shops in dorpies you’ve probably never heard of.
We ventured deep into the khaki mountainlands of the Richtersveld and followed the great floods of 2011 from Gariep Dam right across to Kakamas, where the river roiled in the desert like a fat python, restless and deadly.
We took on the mountain passes of the Drakensberg and the Klein Karoo, with the bakkie relentlessly growling its way through all conditions and obstacles.
We have seen the Karoo in times of plenty and in desperate times of drought. We have prayed with the farmers of the Hard Man’s Karoo, partied with the youngsters at the AfrikaBurn, sung at huiskonserte in the strangest little spots, driven through blizzards and endured a blistering sandstorm in the Kalahari.
Karoo mechanics love the KB
“Aah, the Karoo Space bakkie!” a padstal owner in the middle of nowhere would exclaim, as she gifted us a couple of meaty pies “for what you do for the Karoo”.
To Jules and me, this was far more rewarding than any of the journalism trophies we won back in our city days. The Isuzu KB had become the third essential cog in the Karoo Space wheel.
In our time with this vehicle, we have come to know many mechanics, who tended to a clutch plate in Uniondale, a battery in Williston, a wheezing fuel pump in Willowmore, a reconditioned gearbox in Barrydale and a firm smack on the solenoid at Kruisrivier.
They love to work on the KBs, which they regard as “legends”.
CAT Motors steps in
But the hard roads travelled over 16 years and 320 000km began to take their toll on our beloved KB. That’s when our home dealership in Cradock, CAT Motors, came to the rescue.
They took it in for a couple of days and assigned KB specialist Riaan van Dyk (who has nursed his own over the 1 000 000km mark) to check it from top to bottom.
The list of ailing parts was fearsome. However, Shaun Jordaan, financial manager at CAT Motors, made it his project to source the original-brand parts and Van Dyk installed them. And the bill? Well, here’s the thing: there was no bill.
“Karoo Space has been our client for 12 years,” says Jordaan. “Our job has been to keep them on the road, getting their stories all over the Karoo. In the Isuzu spirit of adventure, we have joined Chris and Julie in their projects and are proud to be promoting the Karoo.”
In the time of drought
Now you have to know something about life out here. We are in the death grip of a drought that seems to know no end. In some places there are seven-year-old children who have never seen rain.
Farmers have lost almost all their livestock in large areas of the Northern and Eastern Cape. Their retirement funds and other policy monies were spent long ago.
There is no water, the windpumps are failing and wheezing taps in many homesteads are coughing up brackish water.
Soon they, too, will dry up, leaving no option for the farmer and his family but to leave.
Pulling together
When something like this hits the farming community, the local town suffers along with it.
So it is incredible to think that in this dire economic climate, CAT Motors in Cradock should come to the rescue.
“We should all pull together during this time,” says Jordaan. “That’s the only way we’re going to make it.” – www.karoospace.co.za