This story was told to me in the karoo veld, a few kilometres from Kenhardt by Linda Mans, while picking Kanna for the cooking pot.
Living on a farm in the far reaches of the Great Karoo can be a lonely place, especially if you unexpectedly find yourself alone, as did Gilda Jakoba Le Roux. Her husband Charl Petrus passed away a few days short of her fifty-second birthday. And with his passing, loneliness arrived; not something any woman would wish for. Companionship had been a constant shadow her whole life.
Gilda’s wedded life started at an early age. She married Charl Petrus on her eighteenth birthday — it was a double celebration — they spent an extra week in Mossel Bay.
But now he was gone. For over thirty years they saw each other almost every day — it is not like the city where spouses work in different places and get to see each other at the end of each day. Here, in the wide-open spaces of this part of the Karoo, you live with each other; every day dealing with all the tribulations the harsh arid semi-desert climate can throw at you, together. The only entertainment they had, were each other, other than the five thousand sheep that constantly got harassed by the thieving caracals.
There are no shopping malls — no wine festivals — no movie theatre’s — only church sermons on Sundays and their three children, who mostly spent more than half the year in boarding school. And when their children left, solitude was their life — it was just the two of them. Now that Charl Petrus was gone, her children encouraged her to leave the farm and join them in Upington. But no! The farm was her life — this was where she wanted to remain until her dying breath.
One day, two years after her loving Charl Petrus had passed away, while lying on her grandmother’s Rosewood bed reading an old copy of Huisgenoot, Gilda thought about internet dating. But internet dating is not readily available on a farm — no connection as the phones are those windup ones. So seeking courtship is not going to be easy. But a man is good company, not to mention a bit of huffing and puffing in bed, she thought.
Several days later, while sitting on her stoep, having just curled her cascades of greying hair, she was still considering this dilemma of life with no man. It was a dry autumn day. The sheep count had been reduced down to five hundred; just manageable for her and Johannes her hired help. She watched the pomegranate tree swaying in the wind; its leaves fluttering down like dying butterflies. They tossed and turned and were whisked up into the air in swirls, only to be caught by another gust of air and whipped up again, then sent across the dry Karoo parched earth into the brittle tumbleweeds that passed by.
Gilda had prepared herself a simple lunch. A cold avocado corn soup with coriander oil. She knew she was at the dawn of old age. She wanted to maintain a healthy brain, so she always included smart food into her daily diet. Besides the fruit’s ani-inflammatory properties she knew avocado’s monounsaturated fat, contributes to a healthy blood flow.
Silence stood still. Occasionally a gust of wind would wake up the ageing wooden veranda floorboards. The creaking resonating into the parched, dry Karoo air. Gilda sipped her pomegranate juice, which offered potent antioxidants while watching the Karoo tumbleweeds roll by, wondering.
Internet dating was still on her mind. She had observed the tumbleweeds her whole life. Every autumn they would arrive, regular as the Karoo sun. They just rolled by, large round balls, bouncing along haphazardly, picking up the dead bush, and then rolling all the way into the distance. She thought, maybe some of the thistle bounced all the way to Upington, maybe beyond to Kuruman — others east towards Prieska and De Aar. Or perhaps further north all the way to Gaborone. Or even west towards Vredendal – deep in the heart of Namaqualand, where her grandchildren lived.
It was then Gilda had burning bush moment and she thought to herself. What if she put her name, and what she wanted from a man on every tumbleweed that went by? Maybe, just possibly she would get some interested suitors from a lonely farmer, somewhere in the wide Great Karoo veld?
So that week, Gilda Jakoba Le Roux drove two hundred and twenty-five kilometres to her local Agrimark and bought herself a shopping bay full of Jiffy bags. She inserted a note typed on Charl Petrus old Remington typewriter her personal needs and details and placed each piece of paper in a little Jiffy bag on every tumbleweed that rolled by. She used up twenty-five packets of twenty over the next few weeks.
Several months passed by. And over the next two years, thirty-two suitors came courting. It wasn’t long, before she was happily married. As to who she married . . . . Well, that’s her secret. But some say a handsome farmer from Gamoep.
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