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  Port Jolly

  I have lived with this image of the Richtersveld for decades. It is the portrait of an aged woman, perhaps old before her time. The face is plump and folded, the smile is gaptooth-marvellous, the eyes are squinty yet glinting with humour. The whole delicious array of facial features is framed by a faded pink bonnet, standard headgear for the Dames of the Dry Land.

  The fantasy continues as she invites me into her yard. She lets me photograph her in the late afternoon and the soft light plays lovingly on her wrinkles. We drink strong bush tea in tin cups and laugh together. Small gifts are exchanged, in the spirit of the encounter.

  Like a zealous television-licence inspector, I had scanned the streets of Khubus in the northern Richtersveld for any sign of womenfolk wearing traditional bonnets. But it must have been the Bonnet Brigade’s day off, because the lanes were bare and the doors were closed and even the kids who were said to hang out on the hill behind the car cemetery and smoke stuff were nowhere to be seen. So we took the dusty road south to Lekkersing in the search for a bonnet. We only found out later that you had to book well in advance for the people of the Richtersveld to dig inside their family wagon chests and dress up like their ancestors for you. They don’t sit around the old matjeshuis smoking goat tobacco, wearing bonnets and generally being ‘19th-century crusty’ every day of the week. And certainly not for nothing.

  Like a typical low-rent tourist, I had come roaring into town in my shiny pickup truck (OK, maybe not so shiny), dispensing smiles and asking dumb questions and expecting all the locals to shuffle into cultural-village mode. How naïve. This is the hot, dry country. You only rush about when it’s absolutely necessary. The mostly unemployed townsfolk are poor, often miserable, occasionally drunk and entirely without a sense of humour about rich, romping tourists and their invasive ways.

  “Blast that bonnet picture,” I cursed.

  “Forget it,” advised Jules. “Let’s concentrate on what really happens to us.” I drove on in a huff and promptly got us hopelessly lost in the wide wastes of the Richtersveld.

  We came upon two Land Rovers that looked packed for an around-the-world-andback trip. Someone in this khaki ensemble would know the road to Lekkersing. Or, at least, the words to ‘You Are My Sunshine’. They looked as though they carried a global positioning system in every pocket of their war-correspondent jackets. I made for the driver of the lead vehicle and nearly choked in wonder and surprise.

  “Pieter du Plessis, you old bastard!” I shouted. Out here in the Richtersveld, profanity works a charm. The last time I had seen this cheerful, swarthy young man had been eight years previously in the jungles of southern Borneo. He had been the star of Team South Africa in the daunting Camel Trophy race. I was one of the steaming, heaving media guys covering this celebration of mud, sweat and gears. It was Pieter who charmed the girls from Balikpapan to Pontianak in Indonesian Kalimantan and won the Team Spirit award with his partner, Sam de Beer. Pieter now earned his crust as a specialist overland-safari guide.

  I rushed over to his guests, a party of Belgian tourists, and told them about Pieter, Borneo and me. They could have been a little more impressed.

  Oh God, I thought. I’m romping again.

  “It does not surprise us,” the alpha Belgian said, with an accent one could only describe as Franco-Asterix. “You South Africans all know each other.”

  I noticed that there was a wooden snake wound around the edges of the windshield of the Belgians’ Land Rover and one of the doors bore a sign saying ‘Live Specimens In Transit’, but I said nothing at the time. Later on, when we’d all shaken hands and parted, it was a different story.

  “Forget alarm systems and tracker devices and gear locks,” I enthused at Jules. “I’m gonna get us a wooden snake and a ‘live specimens’ sign. Then no one will ever break into the bakkie. Who likes to tangle with a snake, especially a snake curled up somewhere in the luggage?”

  Babble, babble, blah, blah. Some days you just wake up and behave like an overheated Labrador puppy, running in all the wrong directions at once and peeing on the carpet to boot. I think it had something to do with the knowledge that we’d be sleeping in Port Nolloth that night. The tree house of my rowdy youth.

  Just up the road, the barren veld turned into a sea of soft green, dotted with clumps of purple succulent flowers. We walked around silently for a while, the sun on our necks, the buzz of insects at our feet. The Land Rover convoy had become two distant puffs of dust.

  The village of Lekkersing was backstage Richtersveld. We saw tin-roofed houses cooking like pizza ovens in the summer sun and a diamond-quartzite mine that had ripped chunks from the land. We found a man walking in the street and asked about someone called Willem Diergaard, another contact from Alexander Bay.

  “Who wants to know?” he asked, glaring at me. I shrugged and drove on, past shops wistfully named Goeie Hoop and Paradise. Again, not a bonnet in sight.

  The Richtersveld is fabulously rich and obviously flawed. It has diamonds, copper and all manner of minerals. It has the desert wilderness, which enchants adventurers. The Big Five (lions and such, also called ‘charismatic megafauna’) might work for a first-timer to Africa. But once you’ve been to a vast dry space like this, you become like Fred Cornell, the lyrical prospector. You’ll think up any excuse to return on a belly safari to marvel at the small things of the desert. There is also the Gariep and its fabulously fertile banks, which can feed the entire province and still have enough left for export. Possibly most importantly of all, this area has a very interesting nomadic culture, which could draw thousands more visitors each travelling season.

  So why is the Richtersveld home to 5 000 of some of the most dispirited, broken people you ever saw? Why can’t all this latent wealth and opportunity heal the community?

  “Chris, that’s like asking why diamonds can’t heal the Congo,” said Jules as we drove on and spoke about this supremely sad irony. “Why oil can’t heal Angola.”

  “And why there are no bloody people with bloody bonnets on!” I shouted out of the window, adding my five cents to the discussion.

  Just then, on the road between Steinkopf and Springbok, we encountered something that defied the eye. A team of burly road workers were hard at their task with pick and shovel – and two of them were wearing the classic Richtersveld women’s bonnets to avoid the sting of the mid-morning sun.

  Jopie Kotze, maverick publisher and legendary owner of the Springbok Lodge, couldn’t explain it.

  “Maybe you’ll find the answer in one of these books,” he said, waving at his vast collection of local literature. We duly plundered his shelves. I paid him, using my plastic debit card. Then we saw some more books and I paid him again. Then we found another straggler we just had to have.

  “I’m beginning to really like this little card of yours,” Jopie said with a smile. He sat behind his counter like a Namaqua pasha, dispensing satire and social comment with great largesse.

  “I’m a museum piece,” he flung at us, as we prepared to stumble out under the weight of some rather intriguing books. I asked him how the Namaqua flower season had gone.

  “Great,” he beamed. “We had more tourists than flowers.”

  We entered Port Nolloth behind a bakkie driven by a Rastafarian guy with what looked like 3 metres of hair under an enormous crocheted doily. Port Nolloth is where I used to come as a young man on a break from the city, to throw my name away and behave badly. It was my Tijuana, my secret place, where I could be silly, wild and foolish without anyone raising an eyebrow. This was a town of hard cases. Nothing I did could ever top these guys, who have been ripping it up since the Cornish miners came here in the Victorian copper-quest era. Port Nolloth has seen it all.

  Is it the mist? Is it the sand? Is it the wind, the pure rock ’n’ roll of a diver’s life, the little scandals, the diamond scams plotted in back rooms? Or is it just the moonlight romance of a bell buoy tong-tonging away in the channel as the little diamond boats we
ave in from a wild tangle with the Atlantic Ocean? Port Nolloth has to be one of the most seductive, bad-ass towns in Africa. The men, with their gaunt faces, seafarers’ beanies and faded jeans, have the air of Montana cowboys about them. And something in the foggy mien of Port Nolloth enhances the women as well. Girls of the frontier. Feisty as hell.

  There are many names for this town. Some, referring to its wall-to-wall party reputation, like to call it ‘Port Jolly’. That’s quite apt, since it was named after a guy who came here in a boat called The Frolic. Others, mindful of its hard-bitten reputation as a drug den, call it ‘Snort Polloth’. But most of the locals just call it ‘Port’, and leave it at that.

  The daylight hours were almost done. We went for a spin down to the docks before checking in at the Bedrock Guest House on the seafront. There was great excitement on the loading jetty. One of the diamond boats was sinking for some reason. Only its nose and captain’s cabin jutted out of the waves. The people on land were trying to haul it back out with a 4x4 and a suspect length of rope. I asked one of the bystanders what had happened. He looked me up and down, taking in my sandals and Hawaiian pub-crawling shirt.

  “It drank too much water,” he said, turning away to talk to a more sombrely dressed local. I couldn’t care less. Do me a favour – I was in Port Nolloth, for heaven’s sake.

  Unloading the bakkie was a mammoth task, which I performed with long teeth and a slow trudge. As I came back for a second load, I saw a grizzled old fellow chatting up my wife.

  “They wrote about me in the Rand Daily Mail more than 20 years ago,” he was saying to Jules. “It was a really big article.”

  “I know,” I said, coming up behind him, excited as all hell again. “I wrote the piece. Hello Alfie.” Another episode of It’s A Small World was about to begin.

  In the mid-1980s, Alfie Wewege was a strapping man, the unofficial ‘king of the divers’, and he had opened his home, his bar and his personal life to me, a wide-eyed reporter from the Johannesburg-based Rand Daily Mail morning newspaper. It was actually Alfie who got me hooked on Port Nolloth. And here we were, two decades later. Back at the start of it all.

  We shook hands with gusto and then threw caution to the winds and exchanged manly hugs.

  “Come to supper,” he said. “Meet my mates Geoff and Lara. We’ll catch up.” He strolled off. I stood in the middle of the road. Two teenage girls, who had been watching us and giggling, came sauntering past arm in arm, singing:

  “And I can’t help falling in love. With you-hoo.” Well, I thought. I’ve had a day of familiar faces. Borneo Camel Man and King of Divers’ Row. Manly hugs are definitely in order. Mock away, girls.

  We purchased two bottles of red wine, one bottle of whisky and a large bottle of Coke for Alfie (who had wisely taken the Dry Road after years on the Rowdy Road). We arrived at the beachfront house of Geoff and Lara Lorentz, in the middle of a rather jolly birthday celebration for Pam, Lara’s mom. The Lorentz family were living in the original house owned by Jack Carstens (whom you’ll meet along the way). Jack and his crew found the first Namaqua diamond. Geoff Lorentz was one of Port Nolloth’s most experienced divers. The Carstens magic had obviously rubbed off on this genial man.

  Although the sign at the front door said “Out Of It People Not Welcome”, Geoff and I began drinking whisky. A lot of whisky. We sat in the kitchen, surrounded by waves of raucous conversation and an overlay of Pearl Jam at top volume.

  “I’ve been a millionaire more than once,” he told me.

  “And then he gives it all away,” added Alfie.

  “I’ve got a scrap yard of old boat parts in my garage,” said Geoff, pouring me a triple. “People come rooting around here for stuff they need to get their vessels going again. We all have to help each other. I love this job. Every time we go past that bell buoy in the channel, I think this could be the trip. It could happen today. The big one. But tell me. What do you think of Pearl Jam?”

  “It’s an acquired taste,” I replied, blinking across at him with the eyes of a tired old owl. “Here. Play this Springsteen instead. Now what’s the work like?”

  “It’s a job for kings. Sometimes, you find yourself in perfect weather conditions. You’re in the right spot, the gravel is beautiful. It’s also the shittest job in the world, when it’s misty and cold and blustery out there.”

  I then caught up with Alfie before the booze caught up with me. He’d been all over the oceans of the world since I’d last seen him, mainly working the prawn boats around Madagascar. Jules and I had also recently been to the ‘Great Red Island’, so we rabbited on about that mystic place for a while.

  “What’s so wonderful about being here?” I slurred at Geoff. As if I didn’t know.

  “It’s the whole life. Being out at sea with your friends. And it’s this weird place called Port Nolloth. It has a separate reality.”

  “You can say that again,” Lara chimed in, having attacked a bottle of reasonable red with the help of my wife, who had given up the technological battle with her digital recorder and was making chicken scratches in her notebook. “Have they told you about the Desperate Divers’ Wives Club yet?”

  Oh man. My head was swimming. I had to get some fresh air. I stood up from the table and fell face down onto the floor. Jules helped me up.

  “Excellent!” cheered Lara. “You mean your husband does that too?”

  The events of the day, not to mention more than a wee dram of something Scottish, had overcome me. Jules and I sang something from Woodstock as we walked arm in arm down the road. I could hear the bell buoy tong-tonging out to sea in the mist, where what remained of my good name was floating off in the direction of Uruguay. Life couldn’t get much better. This, after all, was Port Nolloth. The tree house of my youth …

  Chapter 4: Kleinsee

  Here for De Beers

  In the morning, I awake with a monster-class Port Nolloth hangover.

  “I wonder how the other guy feels,” I say to Jules, referring to Geoff Lorentz. She is lurking in the kitchen of our Bedrock Cottage, brewing very strong coffee. “Let’s go and have a look.”

  With a serious case of the morning-afters, we crab-walk gingerly up to the Lorentz house. Mother Pam and the lusty Lara are in fine fettle.

  “Oh, Geoff went out in the Blues Breaker (his tuppy) very early this morning,” is the astounding news. “The sea calmed down and conditions are perfect for work.” They give us tea in the courtyard. Pam, who should still be comatose after her birthday carousing, has just been leading an aerobics class for seniors. She is full of beans.

  “Some time ago, the police conducted a huge IDB raid on the whole town,” she tells us. “The channel into Port Nolloth was closed. Geoff was at sea at the time and had run out of provisions. So I convinced the cops to fly out one of their helicopters, hover over the Blues Breaker and gently lower a pot of stew, a change of clothes and three bottles of Old Brown sherry in a net bag down to the boys.”

  Whenever the Blues Breaker brought its gravel in to the TransHex plant, Lara became the sorter. For the rest, she raised their children, cooked hearty meals for the crew, waited for Geoff and worried when their boat was caught out in foul weather – just like the other Port Nolloth divers’ women. Lara and Geoff had been married for five years and adored each other.

  “I sometimes grope him in the sorting plant,” she said, over a second cup of tea. “Geoff has to remind me of all the cameras in there, pointing at us. They must have some interesting footage by now.”

  When a steamy little town like Port Nolloth lies between two obscenely rich diamond fields restricted by either the government or De Beers, it’s obvious that the inflow of illicit stones will make its way through its streets. It has always had the reputation for being the Casablanca of the Northern Cape.

  Drugs were the new diamonds, we now heard. The night before, Geoff and Alfie had told us about the increase of hard drugs in Port Nolloth. Before, it was not unheard of for a diver to indulge in a mari
juana joint or two. Alcohol, however, had traditionally been the escape substance of choice up here.

  “Now we’ve got Nigerians in town, selling all kinds of drugs,” Geoff said. “And let me tell you, there are very few things more dangerous than a Mandrax-smoker diver.”

  The divers went out in the tuppies maybe four days a month, when the Atlantic Ocean calmed down enough to let them in. Once out at sea and over a likely-looking section of gravel, the divers were faced with a daunting, very physical task. They descended in wetsuits deep into the Benguela Current, where it was dark, icy and uncertain. Once they reached the bottom of the sea, they shoved large steel nozzles into the gravel.

  Things happened down there, in the undersea obstacle course of gullies, potholes and traps. Sometimes, huge rocks were dislodged in the ‘search-and-suck’ operation. In January 2006, 42-year-old Derrick du Plooy was pumping gravel in the sea off Alexander Bay when he was crushed to death by a huge rock that fell on him about 5 metres below the surface.

  At sea, divers suffered injuries to joints, cracked ribs and burst eardrums from the rockfalls and decompression. On land, they faced boredom and booze. Now it was the drugs. And no one wanted to go out to sea with an addict, who could endanger everyone’s lives in so many ways.

  As we left Port Nolloth, a ruby-red BMW roared past us (the driver had left the baffles at home) towards the jetty, its inscrutable smoky windows wound right up, with heavy hip-hop blaring out through disco speakers. Was this a Nigerian drug dealer, or just another crazy Namaqualander letting off steam?

  Our destination that day was De Beers’s Kleinsee, part of the world diamond industry, a business that extracts 120 million carats of rough diamonds from the planet annually. Just more than 20 tonnes of diamonds are sold to producers for US$7 billion. Once they are cut, set and ready to appear in a Manhattan jeweller’s window, they are priced at US$50 billion. Really good business for a generally useless little piece of carbon.