Looking for a Cock in the Old Church Yard

Nothing much ever happens here. There’s the official reason why people come here, a dead artist’s house that has been turned into a museum: a magical, mystical space that is filled with an ironically beautiful pathos.

An untarred main road, the highest mountain in the Great Karoo, tranquility, charm, animals and about a thousand mostly sad people. Sad because there are few options and no distant horizons – both physically and metaphorically – nestled here in this mostly unspoilt valley.

There is the comparatively mammoth Dutch Reformed Church with its monolithic spire; century old cypresses, pear and pepper trees lining the streets; the furrows that still channel water through the village from the ancient spring high up in the Sneeuberg Range; and at night you have to appreciate the fact that there are no streetlights as the sky sparkles in an unrivaled celestial splendour.

Then there is the old church hall with the old church yard situated between two residential properties: in the one backyard there are chickens and geese and in the other a wily old cock.

I was living in the flatlet behind the church hall and after a walk one afternoon I returned to find one of my neighbours, a dour Afrikaans widower who never greeted, walking down the lane and by way of explaining her presence she announced with a deadpan expression: “I was looking for my cock, it escaped over the fence.”

Needless to say, I had to stop myself from saying what came to mind, but after the urge to laugh had passed and upon reflection, I realized that this random, brief interaction was a suitable allegory for life in this little village.

Many of the people who have either grown up here or who have become one of the locals are unable to recognize the indifferent contradiction that their lives represent; incapable of seeing how funny – and often ludicrous – their views and opinions about the rest of the population and the country are; how their attitude is outdated and part of an era that is gone forever no matter how hard they try to hold on to the past and maintain a status-quo which at least afforded them a false sense of self-worth. They do not even see how their criticism of the government and the constitution and the law is simply indicative of their own victimized apathy and small minded wretchedness.

Everyday it amazes me how in a beautiful little place like this with a population of just a thousand permanent residents, there is so much that is wrong. More than 90% of the population are unemployed, living without hope of reprieve while the rest chat about ‘them’ and ‘their’ lot over drinks and dinner, without a need to define 'us'; sometimes with a sympathetic tear, sometimes in murderous anger; always without the resolve to create a lasting solution.

Maybe the situation in this town is indicative of what is happening in this country…