Louis Trichardt

(This is one of a series of articles I wrote dealing with memories of an African childhood. To read the first of these, click here)

Way back in the mists of time, I was a university student in Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Natal province in South Africa. This was a distance of 1,200 miles from my home in Harare, Zimbabwe, and most would make that journey by rail, down to Bulawayo, then through the interminable red dirt wastes of Botswana, across the Transvaal, following just north of its border with the Orange Free State, and so through the passes of the Drakensberg Mountains into the verdant green of Natal. So did I - the first time.

It was a terrible journey. Devotees of the steam engine would probably be in ecstacy over it now but, to me, it was sheer torture. Two days and one night of soot-flecked boredom and heat with only the distant promise of arrival to look forward to. The fact that I find it impossible to sleep on a train meant that, by the second day, I was exhausted and determined that never again would I make this journey by rail.

The only alternative was hitch-hiking. Although unpredictable, this means of travel was always quicker than the train and supplied much more entertainment along the way, sometimes more than I had bargained for. In the years that followed, I hitch-hiked between the university and home many times, sometimes just for a long weekend.

There were two possible routes through the Transvaal to the Zimbabwean border at Beitbridge. One could take the main road all the way to Johannesburg and then turn north to go through Pretoria and Nylstroom to Pietersburg, eventually reaching Messina and the border. Johannesburg was a huge obstacle, however, a great sprawl of a city that would deter any hitch-hiker wanting to move quickly, and north of it there stretched an endless succession of dry, dusty and delapidated towns that looked much like each other, allowing one no sense of getting closer to one's goal.

The alternative was to branch off at Ladysmith in Natal and to follow the lesser road through Middelburg and Marble Arch to reach Pietersburg. This was a much more direct route but had the risk of long waits between rides, the traffic being far less than on the main road. Even so, it became my preferred way; anything to avoid Johannesburg.

It was at Pietersburg that the two routes rejoined; this was the last of the typically Transvaal towns before the home stretch that took one to the border. And it had the great advantage of being the last place before the hitch-hiker's dream, Louis Trichardt. At Pietersburg we would glance at each other with fresh hope in our eyes (I generally traveled with a friend); Louis Trichardt next, we would say.

Louis Trichardt was at the northern edge of that vast, dry and featureless plain that stretches for hundreds of miles north from the Vaal River. Behind it stood the Soutpansberg (Saltpan Mountains) Range, the sign that the true Transvaal was over, that from here on it was all downhill until one reached God's chosen country, Zimbabwe. How we longed for our first sight of that little town at the foot of the mountains.

But there was much more to Louis Trichardt that made it the oasis to hitch-hikers that it was. Apart from being cleaner, brighter and prettier than all the Afrikaaner towns before, it contained several diners to gladden the heart and stomach of any hungry hitch-hiker. I do not know whether it was caused by a price war between the diners or just ignorance of prices beyond the little world of this isolated town, but Louis Trichardt's diners offered the most incredible mixed grills for a mere fifty cents. Even in those days, that was ridiculously cheap. On arrival in the town, we would head for the nearest diner and spend the next hour gorging ourselves on a great mountain of grilled meats, sausages, beans, eggs, bread, tomatoes, potatoes and bacon.

We did not eat on the road normally; what mattered to us was getting a ride for the next few hundred miles and to risk missing a car while eating in a diner was not to be considered. But Louis Trichardt was different. Here we would even leave a ride that was going further for the sake of those mixed grills. My mouth waters even now at the thought of them.

Yet even the mixed grills were not the only reason we came to love Louis Trichardt. It was paradise compared to the towns before it. The mountains sent down breezes to cool its atmosphere and streams rushed down to water the land around. The fields were always green with crops and the dust and dirt of the Transvaal was not allowed to enter this happy little community.

They were Afrikaaners all, of course; no British settlers found their way into these more remote outposts of the Transvaal. And, in common with all rural Afrikaaners, they were enormously hospitable. It did not matter that we were disreputable in our looks, hairy and disheveled in typical sixties student fashion; they opened their houses to us if we were becalmed for the night and fed us "fit to bust".

The road north from Louis Trichardt runs up into a high pass through the Soutpansberg, at times spectacular but always fresh, cool and green with vegetation. It emerges into what we called "lowveld", dry country with little grass but many drought-resistant shrubs and the first of the upside-down trees, the baobabs that mean that you have reached "Darkest Africa".

But it's the little town of Louis Trichardt that remains in my memory as the high point of all those hitch-hiking trips so long ago. Almost certainly, time will have changed it and the death of hitch-hiking will have brought to an end its reign as our mecca. I am sure that the diners, too, will have seen sense by now and be charging for their fare much as anywhere else in South Africa.

Some things do not change, however, and the mountain breezes must still waft a cooler air upon the town and green fields still feed upon the streams. And I hope that the people remain much as they were and still show that carefree hospitality that was always their trademark.

(to read the next of the African Memories articles, click here)