Fruit sellers near Tzaneen, Limpopo
You know how it is. You keep saying, “I’ll stop at the next farm stall.” Because the last one appeared out of nowhere and you were driving a little too fast. And then you drive past the next one too, and you begin to get serious: “Okay, definitely the next one!”
A day can go by like this when you’re travelling through the Lowveld because it’s chock-a-block with excellent farm stalls.
On this particular day, I was driving from Hoedspruit to Tzaneen. From there, I planned to drive back up the escarpment via Magoebaskloof to eventually rejoin the N1 at Polokwane. I was going to stay over with relatives that night, and if your family is anything like mine, you don’t arrive emptyhanded. Preferably, you arrive with fruit because my relatives are farmers and when you arrive with fruit, it shows that you have supported a farmer somewhere else – a gesture that never goes unnoticed. Fruit is a wonderful gift, and a Lowveld fruit can be properly exotic by the time you unpack it 400 km deeper into South Africa, where a litchi or a kiwi fruit is something noteworthy.
Do you remember the first time you saw an olive that didn’t come out of a tin, in about 1991? Yes, fruit can be both admired and eaten. No one oohs and ahs for five minutes at a pack of Ghost Pops, right? But an avo the size of a rugby ball – sheer magnificence! And worthy of pride of place on the dining room table for a few days for everyone to look at and lust after and wonder what to eat it with.
So, when this colourful, informal fruit stall came into view, I took my foot off the pedal of the Mahindra I was driving. Donny Banyini (pictured right) and Daniel Mnici were the guys manning the stall, and they were very happy to see me – first customer of the day and all that. They were lucky because I had cash to burn.
I bought a box of six huge butter avos for R60, six papayas for R30, eight mangoes for R70 and eight jaarlemoene for R50. (A jaarlemoen is a citrus fruit somewhere between a mandarin orange and a pomelo… So tasty!) I rationed the avos carefully so that I had some left for my mother a thousand kilometres further down the road in the Eastern Cape, and I saved one for myself to eat back home in the Overberg, too. They were indeed buttery, silky and utterly delicious.
Donny and Daniel also sold watermelon (R50 each), navel oranges (R30 per bag) and small avocados (R50 for fifteen!). Their wares are all from local farms and therefore vary from season to season. In winter, there will be lots of citrus like naartjies and “too much oranges” (according to Donny), plus something to wow your relatives in Kenhardt with: starfruit.
Litchis? Be there in December. There are several informal fruit sellers along this stretch of road – if you miss the first one, stop at the next. They all sell more or less the same produce. Where? Along the R71, about 5 km east of Letaba Junction, which is about 30 km east of Tzaneen.
Opening times: From about 6 or 7 am to about 5 or 6 pm.
Contact: 071 251 5256 (Donny)