Finding peace in the vortex

Richard Welch lives in a boomed off enclave called Randview, on the edge of overpopulated Yeoville flatland. His house overlooks Lorentzville and adjacent suburbs. "I can see the old synagogue directly from up here, and the mosque. I hear the call to prayer every day."

A background of social and political engagement as an anti-apartheid activist and an educator, has contributed to Richard’s perspective that to live authentically in the South African context requires finding “the vortex” and making a place of peace within it. This philosophical orientation is the thread that connects the different strands of his life and serves as a barometer of the efficacy of his day to day decisions.

His eccentric home, constructed on ancient rock in the 1930s, is surrounded by a multi-layered garden which slopes downwards towards the valley. The unexpected interrelationship between trees, shrubs, flowers, herbs and vegetables, says something about Richard’s faith in creating a space for variety to thrive on its own terms.  A visitor remarked that the garden made him feel as though he was in the country, in the city.  “That made me so happy,” Richard beams, “because that is exactly what I have tried to do.”

The Welch garden is a haven of peace, attentively cultivated to balance the circumstances of his life in the second hand book trade and his proactive day-to-day engagement with the local community.

He offers a wealth of information about formal and informal traders from Yeoville to Bertrams and beyond, and knows where to buy anything from halaal Egyptian sausages to Congolese dried fish.  His culinary experiments and willingness to try out whatever new cuisine presents itself from diverse corners of the continent in his own kitchen, are notable. “There is a Congolese man who sells fish and meat and the kinds of vegetables and he is very keen to teach you how to cook the kind of food they eat in Central Africa. Then at the market you get all kinds of things that we as South Africans don't know how to cook, like Zimbabwean spinach, which is very different from our spinach. It is very, very thick and you have to boil it for a long time and then wash it and cut it finely, and then fry it..."

Richard owns an inimitable bookshop, Kalahari Books (named long before Kalahari Net came into being), a block away from Louis Botha Avenue, which is one of the major suburban arterial roads in Johannesburg, and the main road into the huge, historic township of Alexandra.  Here too, he aspires to foster a still place in the “centre of the storm” for customers to “follow their own strand of thought” and “find themselves through books.”

Unlike the pristine bookshops, set apart from the mainstream of life in suburban shopping malls, Richard's bookshop, known affectionately as the “Garret” is an old warehouse, accessed from the road by means of a ramp, and surrounded by small traders, light industry and suburban housing. I made a note of “Orchards Wheel and Tire”, “Jay-Jay's Car Wash”, “Mashi Rose Tombstones,” “E&W Steel Design”, “Burgess Plumbing”; “Vintage Clothing”; “Tonino's Pizzeria”.

Inside, books on shelves and in containers line the walls of the 180 square meters building, from concrete floor to corrugated iron ceiling.  A small wooden stairway leading to a narrow walkway assembled from steel, wood and hemp rope, runs alongside the upper part of two of walls. On the opposite side of the room, against the only wall with windows, there is a desk with a computer on it and a red noticeboard exhibiting a picture of the lady Parker; the cover of Laurie Lee's  ”I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning”, and a collection of family photographs.

Two well-worn old armchairs are positioned against a maroon wall beneath a picture of Gandhi as a young man, and an assortment of paintings and drawings by prominent South African artists:  Frans Claerhout; Pippa Skotness; Mary Hume; Godfrey Ndaba; and Norman Catherine.  On another stretch of wall, painted royal blue, there are posters advertising Samuel Becket's 'End Games' and “ Africa Mama Yo”, plays that Welch's actor son had performed in.   

Old metal street and construction signs hang from the frames of shelves: 'Bryanston Drive'; 'Pimm Street'; “Men working overhead (Werkmense besig bo)” bearing boxes and crates of books labeled in thick black ink: Peter Cheney; Howard Spring;Denis Wheatley; Frank G. Slaughter; Stephen King; Taylor Caldwell;  Dornford Yates; Medical Romances;  Shakespearian Studies; Crime Fiction…”

I sit opposite Richard on one of the armchairs. Traditional Indian flute music, and later, Czechoslovakian Gipsy Hip Hop play in the background. I ask him why he chooses to live in the inner city of Johannesburg when so many middle class people have moved away. He leans back in his chair, adjusts his glasses and hat, and waves both hands dramatically as he speaks: "I wanted my son to grow up as a new South African without the weight and burden of the past. I wanted him to be a citizen in his own country. I always thought of Mtutuzela Matshoba's book, “Call Me Not a Man”.

Yukon again

The daugher of one of Yukon's previous owners sent me this description of her childhood. 

"The ‘bearer of light’ …happens to be my father. In fact I grew up in Yukon, it was my childhood home and a place filled with very happy memories.  I remember sliding down its grand banister, knocking on the panels of the ballroom for ‘hidden treasure,’ I remember staring in wonder at the carved cherubim above the bedroom doors and imagining they could speak to me; I remember sitting on my Dad’s lap on the rock that looks like a hippo right at the top of the mountain terrace behind the house, while he told me stories of his time in the bush; and I remember dancing and sliding across the Victorian tiles downstairs in my socks, and staring through the colourful  panes of glass in the front door, imagining magical multi-coloured worlds.

My father was not a mercenary, nor an arms manufacturer… He was a gentleman, a professional photographer and a gifted one at that -with some of his works still exhibited in the Boston Museum of Art. He had his springbok colours in trap (clay pigeon shooting) and made his own clay pigeon cartridges. He also collected antique firearms (probably where the false information about gun manufacturing originated), which he repaired to their former glory involving careful woodwork, engraving and filigree. He was and is still an incredibly gifted antique specialist and can fix and restore just about anything. He had a dedicated workshop for his antique repairs in those days, adjacent to his office upstairs. I would often go in there as a child and watch him work in wonder. It always smelt wonderful...of linseed oil, leather and the pine-forest smell of distilled turpentine.

I have no idea whether the information about the window or fireplace is true or hearsay.

None of the rooms in the living quarters were ever dark or sombre, every room in that house was filled with light and love and beauty. The only dark room was his photographic studio, for obvious reasons.

Whilst under the ownership of my dad, the house appeared in the covers of Habitat magazine, something surely unheard of considering it was so garishly decorated, according to your gathered descriptions of it? He created something truly magnificent and paid the utmost respect to the heritage of the house. The upstairs floors were most certainly not ‘carpeted’ in lion skins, nor were the walls adorned with the gaudy gold icons you describe. The only room I can imagine this information to be built on was his formal office upstairs, where we had one very special and very beautiful hand painted antique icon that was the last thing left of our Russian/Greek family who died in the Russian revolution. There were in fact only two lion skins (not my favourite) but the office was carefully decorated in the African colonial style that he had so much respect for (pictures in the Habitat magazine I speak of).  In fact, every piece of furniture, every detail was carefully and lovingly chosen in order to match the period and style of the house’s late Edwardian architecture. 

He was there for 28 years and spent 25 of those years restoring and reworking the sometimes irreparable damage that had been done to the house under its previous ownership. Along with the ‘gallons of paint stripper’ you mention; much love, sweat, blood and tears were spent restoring Yukon. In fact if it wasn’t for him, you most certainly wouldn’t find it in the preserved condition it is today. It would be a wreck; it’s beautiful woodwork under layers and layers of chipping paint, its floors rotting, and its beauty a mere memory.  

Not only did he restore Yukon to her former glory, he created an incredible terraced garden at the back of the house that, owing to the rich soil washed down from the koppie and his incredible green fingers, allowed Mediterranean fruits and vegetables to thrive. We had peaches, plums, artichokes, cherries, apricots, mulberries, walnuts, avocados, greengages and the most delicious grapes... all lovingly hand planted, pruned and looked after by him. We ate from that terrace all year round.

Under my father’s ownership, Yukon was certainly a place of light and it was a very sad day to see it sold before he moved away from South Africa. It was tasteful, stately and gracious, not the dark seedy, Russian ‘mafiosa’/criminal place you conjure up...It was a much loved HOME.  

I remember running around the house as an eleven year old giving little goodbye kisses to inanimate structures around the house; to wooden panels, to banister rungs, to window frames- a strange childhood fear that the house might think that I wouldn’t miss it... it was a long and sad goodbye and I’d love to return to see it someday."