Join us on the stoep!
Towards the end of last year, we headed north, away from Cape Town. Not on the N1, but along the back roads, past Namaqualand and the Northern Cape. All along the way into the Free State, we feasted our eyes on the beauty of some of the towns where you can see people really care: there’s Calvina’s beautifully preserved old houses, Vosburg’s tree canopy that turns the entire town into a cool capsule and Rosendal with its stunning old sandstone homes and dusty streets where dogs take precedence over vehicles.
But others... In Koffiefontein, once home to writer Etienne Leroux and therefore a place with enormous potential, streets were full of rubbish and we couldn’t wait to get out of there to find greener pastures. Then there was Strydenburg: piles of rubbish in the streets, and the buildings – some of them national monuments – were neglected and derelict. Peeling plaster, broken windows and many gardens looked like something from Chernobyl’s doorstep. The roads were wrecked, the shops empty – it was if there was no one left to hear the church bells echo over the plains.
Hopefully, there will be one person who’ll rise up and decide that Strydenburg can become a friendly, well-maintained town where people will want to stop and get out and sleep over.
IT WAS ON THIS TRIP that we developed somewhat of an obsession with stoeps. Why? Because, as Marie Viljoen says so beautifully on page 64, a stoep is “a hand over the eyes that stops the sun from blinding the house. The place where flies vibrate between shutter and window.” A place where plants flourish.
We saw loads of stoeps, and many lovely ones too, but disappointingly few of them sported much greenery. We could speculate why, but here at Platteland we want to get the ball rolling to turn South Africa’s stoeps into luscious havens. It’s so easy: plant in pots or tins or bowls or even feeding troughs (see page 70). Spruce up your stoep and send us a pic.
It is, after all, the best spot in the home. Especially in the platteland.