The Sun Has Risen On The Earth …

when OBIE OBERHOLZER enters Zoar. And the early light crackles the landscape of this Klein Karoo village, as a steeple sends out whispers. In the distance, the hulking Rooiberg watches

Before embarking on yet another country trip into the gramadoelas, I make an appointment with my physician and friend, Dr P Bandana. He’s a truly compassionate man, and a supreme adventurer who has been to both the North and South Poles.

Every time I have an appointment, he places a collection of the latest COUNTRY LIFE magazines in his waiting room. As he is very popular, I always have to wait. While doing my waiting-room-wait, I flippantly flip through these country magazines, not really wanting to know where the latest country fair is being held. Until my roving eye notices a pretty woman engrossed in one of my articles in COUNTRY LIFE.

After repeated grunts, I catch her attention and tell her (and the rest of the patients in the room) that I wrote the article she’s reading. The good doctor’s goodiest receptionist looks up and rolls her eyes at me, embarrassed. I bet my right leg that she’s thinking, ‘What a windgat.’ Then the pretty lady looks over at me, frowns in disgust as if I am deathly ill with some ghastly African virus, neatly lays down the country magazine and picks up another magazine with Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, on the cover.

Actually, I am not sick at all. I’ve just come for Dr P Bandana to freeze off a few small warts on the leg I betted on. He laughs, and then asks if we should start with the big one between my ears. Funny-ha-ha. I need more knowledge from him about my next destination, the Klein Karoo village of Zoar, where his farm in the Rooiberg borders some of Zoar’s communal lands.

I leave afterwards with the same little warts still on my betting leg but a head lavished with information. I mean, what a true humanitarian he is, allowing the subsistence farmers of Zoar to graze their goats on his land. Hugely Biblical, I say.