Rift Valley Reflections: Neighbours

Tuesday 26 July 2011

Neighbours

Properties here are small and close together. There is a mingling of sounds and smells and emotional states. It is inevitable. I know when one of my neighbours is ill before I get told. I know when things are going well and not so well.

Rikkia, my neighbour to the right, shares her scrumptious meals generously. I don’t have to wait for Eid to receive gifts of curry and roti and homemade cookies and other delights through the gap in the blade wire fence dividing her property from mine. Even during Ramadan she calls me to the fence: "Here are some feta pies I know you like so much..." I share too, though not as generously. In my wildest dreams I wouldn't be able to cook the way Rikkia does.

Rikkia likes flowers – pink flowers of any variety. I buy her a bunch of pink flowers from time to time.

At Easter I give the children Easter eggs and at Christmas, sweets and cake. When my neighbours celebrate Eid, such a stream of treats is passed through the fence it is almost overwhelming.

Through this sharing we understand one another’s traditions and habits and preferences and also our struggles and the sadnesses of our lives. According to Rikkia, God has a minute by minute interest in what is happening to us too. “The Almighty knows everything about you and me, Melody…” she says with confidence.

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History of Bezuidenhout Valley and surrounding inner city suburbs of Joburg

The first owner of the farm, known as 'Doornfontein' is said to have been a Voortrekker named Barend Christiaan Viljoen. He apparently named the farm 'Doornfontein' because of the thorn trees (doringbome) and springs (fonteine) on the land.

Records indicate that the farm was transferred to Frederick Bezuidenhout on the same day that it was registered in the name of Viljoen by Mrs. Viljoen, who ceded the farm to the Bezuidenhout family.

Bezuidenhout was a young trekboer who came up from the Cape in 1848 and helped the Viljoen family with the farm. He eventually married the Viljoen's daughter, Judith, after whom the suburb of Judith's Paarl was named.

Frederick is believed to have built the homestead that can be seen today.

The farm consisted of approximately 4,000 hectares of ‘bleak, exposed and sparsely vegetated…’ land, extending from what is now End Street in the west to Bedfordview in the east and from Louis Botha in the north to beyond the Natal Spruit in the south. The Bezuidenhout's farm contributed to Jo'burg's transformation into the City of Gold.

The Main Reef Leader running across the south of the farm was proclaimed a public digging; there was an abundant water supply on the farm; and the requirement for land close to the growing town were critical factors in the evolution of Johannesburg.

Over time sections of the farm were auctioned off and the suburbs of Doornfontein, Jeppestown, Belgravia, Troyeville, Fairview, Bertrams, Lorentzville, Judith's Paarl, Bezuidenhout Valley, Observatory, Kensington, Cyrildene, Dewetshof, Bruma and Morninghill were founded.

Why this blog?

I was born in Johannesburg and have lived here most of my life. For 15 years I lived in the inner city suburb of Bez Valley, where I often felt like one of the characters in 'Road', a play by Jim Cartwright, who said, "It's so hard..."

My thespian nephew played the role of Scullery in the play, the narrator who "meanders aimlessly down his road pointing out features of the grim landscape and setting the scene for the glimpses we see of the inhabitants lives..."

But Cartwright does find hope in the lives of his characters and as Gilbert Keith Chesterton points out, "One sees great things from the valley and only small things from the peak."

I recently moved from Bez Valley to another liminal space on the Louis Botha Avenue side of Orchards, around the corner from Satyagraha House and across the road from the Torah Academy. This is an historically very rich part of Johannesburg and I am already planning a few blog posts.

So this blog will continue to explore the changing face of Jo'burg, moving slightly further afield than Bez Valley and the suburbs that immediately surround it, but not abandoning my starting point by any means. There is still so much to say.