Backstage Williston

In preparation for its eighth annual Winter Festival at the end of this month, this famous settlement on the Karoo Highlands Route has spent the chilly months shining its boots.

- Chris Marais And Julienne Du Toit

Would you believe me if I told you that the little Northern Cape village of Williston was the Willy Warmer Capital of the Karoo? And what if I told you that the Willy Warmers of Williston were lovingly knitted by a senior resident of the local old age home?

My wife Julienne and I are here to see how Williston sets itself up for what has become the most authentic cultural festival in the region. And we’re doing what we do best: crow-picking through the shopping nooks of the Williston Mall in search of oddities. No shortage here.

In among the locally produced booties and beanies is a wide range of imaginatively designed Peter Heaters, first invented by the eternally chilled Norwegians and made from squirrel fur, to be worn under leather trousers in extreme winter conditions.

I now have in my mind a totally different image of the goings-on and the enhanced sense of humour to be found in Karoo retirement communities. And I realise, once again, that I have come home. Maybe there will be whisky and dodgy poker and an extra helping of ice cream in such a place for me one day. And, dare I say it, a discounted Willy Warmer for the snowy seasons?

The retail crannies and little museum of the Williston Mall yield chunks of boerseep, old Sunday-best shirts with celluloid collars, an ancient beach spade, yellowing Personality magazines, exotic jams and koekblikke of every vintage.

Jules discovers a tattered copy of the 14th reprint of the third edition of Kook en Koek Resepte, which seems to have been written in that exciting period when Afrikaans was evolving from Kitchen Dutch to mainstream.

Besides all the recipes for various meat dishes, advice on cleaning a piano and dispensing with unwanted ants, is a little chapter on how to deal with snakebite. That’s big stuff out here in the Karoo, where the lazy puffadder and the Cape cobra lurk in dark home spaces during summer.