As an outsider looking in, it’s a simple thing you see. A garden. But for the insider, it’s not simple at all. They see purpose in every corner, life in every dab of shade. It is the library lonely children retreat to, the playground for overactive imaginations, the church to marvel in, the remote island to find quiet in the storm.
We Are Not One Story. We Are Africa.
“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James A. Michener Imagine the world as one film. In my imagining, Woody Allen is directing. Perhaps your version is more Spielberg or Coppola, […]
The Wine Rorschach Test – Delaire Graff Estate
Wine relieves us from our minds. This is my favourite of its attributes. Which probably says more about me than the wine itself. Such is the nature of this particular poison. In the way that a Lionel Smit or Dylan Lewis speaks to its audience in a myriad of ways, […]
A Touch of Madness – Ellerman House
“Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.” So claimed French writer, Marguerite Duras. This spark of the unusual is one of many things that endears you instantly to Ellerman House‘s Head Chef, Veronica Canha-Hibbert. A spark that ignites similarly in her two children. Perhaps it is the artistic licence of […]
The Mothers of Londolozi
In Africa, everyone is a mother at some time. As Boyd Varty, who grew up in the wilds of Londolozi in the Sabi Sand, writes in his book, Cathedral of the Wild, “In Africa there is nothing unusual in putting a small girl in charge of a […]