The Free Spirit Of The Free State

We all have that one arty cousin – she wears your grandmother’s shawls and has paint under her fingernails. In the family of Eastern Free State towns, the name of this wild child is Rosendal.

- Sophia Van Taak

This is how you get frostbite, I think to myself, as I wriggle my freezing toes in my vellies. They stay numb and I walk on, hoping a stroll through town will help them thaw out.

It’s just after 7 am in July and Rosendal is quiet. Correction: It’s always quiet in Rosendal, but there’s no sign of life just yet. Cattle from the nearby township of Mautse graze next to the road, leaving heaps of steaming dung in their wake. Those dung heaps look so nice and warm! I’m tempted to bury my cold feet in them.

Yesterday I walked the entire periphery of Rosendal – 5,43 km in total. One of the houses I saw on the other side of town was decorated with steel flowers. Art is also in evidence on this side of town: Painter Lein Smuts is sitting on a rock wearing a beanie and scarf, with a sketch pad on her lap. Next door, someone is meditating in front of their sliding door.

The events are all roughly similar in size – about 70 x 100 m – and almost all of them have chickens scratching around in the dirt, wind chimes swaying in the breeze and fairy lights or teacups hanging from porch beams. If you look closely at the big sandstone blocks used to build many of the houses, you can see marks left by the stone cutter: a date, their initials, or just a cross.

I’m in Hertzog Street now and there’s an older woman balanced precariously on a ladder with a paintbrush in her hand. Another woman speeds past in a Hilux bakkie with bags of firewood on the back. She hits the brakes, gets out in a cloud of dust, lifts a bag like it’s a scatter cushion and puts it down next to someone’s garden gate. She drives off and Rosendal sleeps on.

That reminds me: There’s a coal stove in Frik de Jager’s waffle restaurant, Benjamin’s. Just the thing for frozen toes! The church clock catches my eye – it’s four minutes after eight. Frik should be open by now.