While staying in friend Ian Whitton’s lovely cottage outside Stanford near Hermanus, we visited the mission town of Elim and its mission station and tsurts (church) where missionaries came from afar to sternly remind the happy locals that they were actually deadly sinners. Also that they must eat like them, so they needed to build a watermill:
In the village we stopped for some cooldrinks. The family decided to stay in the car as I ducked into a little village store. A line of little kids were sitting flat on their bums on the pavement leaning against the wall all in a row outside the door, watching me. Their backs against the green wall, they basked in the warm sun.
Four-year-old Jess changed her mind and ran after me, grabbing my hand as I drew level with the local gang. Where they’d looked at me rather disinterestedly, they now perked up. One dug her mate in the ribs with her elbow and exclaimed excitedly: “Kyk! Sy’s ‘n Hotnot!”
~~oo0oo~~
We visited Stanford again in the winter:
Kyk! Sy’s ‘n Hotnot – Look! She’s one of us!