This is my world
“This is my world,” says Miss Helen, her voice echoing through distance and time.
Nieu Bethesda draws me close, a tiny microcosm tucked away in a valley beneath the Compassberg, by my calculations, almost exactly halfway in the middle of nowhere, the way I like it.
Life takes on a different pace here, more relaxed, with doves adding their voices to the sound of a slight breeze ruffling the leaves above. The sky is aquamarine mantled with wisps of brushed clouds. Clear water still gurgles in the furrows for gardens and dogs laze in the middle of the dirt roads; the cars drive around the slumbering canines.
Standing outside Miss Helen’s house, where cement owls with wide glass-bottle eyes watch me, I peer through the fence to gain a glimpse of the Camel Yard. Here an assortment of cement-crafted pilgrims and camels journey to a mythical East where bottle-skirted meisies and mermaids beckon for weary travellers to rest, to refresh themselves among glass-lined ponds, pyramids, sphinxes and smiling Buddhas.
Nieu Bethesda is this, a glass-encrusted house of mysteries, light and reflection, but it is more. Nieu Bethesda shines in the smiles of its inhabitants, of warm Karoo-style hospitality and a place in time where the ordinary cares of the city can be dusted from your feet.
Nieu Bethesda is a late-afternoon stroll along dirt roads that run forever through the scrubby veld. It is sipping on a cold beer or freshly ground coffee beneath giant pepper trees. Nieu Bethesda calls me with the scent of farm bread and goat’s milk cheese, of rosemary crushed between fingers, with the promise of rest and a place where time slows to the pace laid down by donkeys’ hooves.
Nieu Bethesda has more stars at night than anywhere else. Around every corner is a story, some tales set in stone dating back to the age of the therapsids, when our kin were but a dream. The little cousins to the dinosaurs – the leguan and the koggelmander – will dash across your path, saying: We are still here.
Unwilling, I must always leave, to live in the shadow of the Hoerikwaggo, but my bones, my soul, belongs to the Karoo, where my forefathers knew the meaning of the word “patience”. As always, my feet and my heart find the path that leads back to Nieu Bethesda, to a place where time stands still.
