This is also a part of the country where the old
traditions have clung the longest. Women still wear their
ochre-coloured dresses with turbans and bracelets of metal
wire; they still traditionally carry jars of water on
their heads in a swaying elegant gait. The young boys
still observe the coming-of-age ceremony called Khwetha.
With their faces and bodies daubed with white clay and
their ‘skirts’ of reeds, they provide an
unearthly magic
touch to the landscape as they walk along the road leaning
on their staffs.
A characteristic of the southern Transkei is the
enormous number of perambulatory domestic animals –
cows, ducks, chickens, goats and pigs - that amble along
the roads and browse around the huts. Cows are the wealth
of the people and are never eaten, and the little black pot-
bellied pigs are mobile garbage disposal units.
Butterworth is the oldest town in the Transkei
and has
become a rather scruffy centre of commerce. However, the
nearby Bawa Falls is a spectacular 100m drop in the Qolora
river, with
hiking trails and an overnight camp. Further along, the tiny town
of Idutywa has a turn-off to the intriguingly-named
Colleywobbles – a tortuously twisting
and fascinating stretch of the Mbashe River. Legend has
it that the area was first seen by a certain Lt. Colley
(who went on later to die at the Battle of Majuba during
the first Anglo-Boer War), who exclaimed: “How that
river
wobbles!” “Yes, indeed sir,” said his
staff, “in fact, it
Colleywobbles!”
Other small towns on the N2 highway that traverses the
Wild Coast from north to south are mostly small trading
centres that are largely indistinguishable from each
other. What is interesting is the slow change of
countryside from north to south.
The southern entry used to be, in the days when the
Transkei was an independent homeland, a large and
efficient border post with visa controls and dogs that
would sniff your pockets for marijuana. Now it is a
mouldering old building with grass growing through the
cement. The road that begins in the south is gently
undulating through sparse and charming countryside: the
hills are green and undulating; in summer the sky is
punctuated with towering white clouds, the landscape is
scattered with little round dwellings, all facing east.
Some of them have pots of soil on their round thatched
roofs housing a small plant as a charm against lightning.
As the road progresses on its winding way it becomes
steeper and more rugged, with intriguing signposts off to
either side. North of Umtata it begins to traverse
kilometres of cliffs and gorges, ravines and valleys.
There are few places in the world where there is a feeling
of such remoteness, and this is the secret of the
region’s
charm. |
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