If Natal were personified, I don’t think she would know her own beauty. Her wild charm would cry out to the unsuspecting passer-by: love me if you dare, but I don’t care if you do or not. She would run, and not turn around to see who was chasing, or pursuing. To her, it would be the same thing. She would call your name and if you didn’t respond: she would look to the sky, and know inherently her own inner strength and will of character. That would be Natal. Sun-bathed, content but above all…free.

Which is why I gravitate to it like a Christmas beetle to a flame. Every year, if I could. But perhaps it’s also because I grew up in her cities, and mountains. Loved by the red earth, the clammy summers, the unpredictable politics of the 90’s. Looking back, it was wild. Added to which, my parents also happily oblivious to potential dangers (often around the corner), and innocently spontaneous in their decisions, which made life exciting and full of change. One day, our skinny pre-school legs would be slouched over the lounge chairs, watching a random afternoon program on TV1 (as it was back then), and the next my mom (in the middle of her mopping) would announce that we would be moving to a no-where place called Hermannsburg. Three of the happiest years.

Twenty- five years later, I drag my little family there: to a village of 25 houses. I look around, in winter, to a place with the ghost of memories. To so much laughter, home-made clothes, and old-school printed photos to prove our countryside existence. 

This year though, our visit was to meet my newest and dearest nephew. And so we booked with Kulula, and played distraction games for two hours with our boys (two and one years of age). The prices of tickets though were almost incomparable: R4100 return. And so we landed on Wednesday midday, and paid R500 for an uber to Hillcrest, via an overgrown and beautiful Krantz Kloof gorge. The plan had been to borrow my sister’s car, only to discover that her clutch was on the brink of retirement- and so ended up having to hire a car from Thrifty car rental (who upon extensive research were also the best deal in the industry).

That Sunday, we left for the hills (via Hermansburg) for a friend’s farm: located between Winterton and Ladysmith). I wanted to show my husband and the boys where I had lived as a girl: so carefree and careless. And on that Sunday morning, we drove from the Deutsche Schule (German school) my sisters and I had been enrolled at, past the piggery, to the NTE village. The only discernable change was a gate, separating the village from the world. Mists of time and change though meant that I couldn’t remember which road led to our old house (the biggest in the village as my dad had been the manager of the factory). But we found it (there being only about three parallel roads amongst which to make a mistake). In the cold of winter, a tractor had delivered free firewood to our home (and it would be thrown over the back fence and into our yard for us to collect). And at the age of 11, a tall and skinny me would chop a block of wood into quarters for that night’s fire. The simple and uncomplicated had filled our lives: leaving us time to smell the scent of a change in season, or visit our gran (who for a while had lived in a sparsely decorated house next to ours).  She was Italian, and constantly had a pot of boiling pasta on the stove. My youngest sister in particular would take advantage of this, and would climb quickly through a hole in the fence to be fed carbs by her adoring grey-haired ancestor.

An hour later we left, and drove via Greytown to the farm, along roads of goats and potholes (not to be driven after dark). Sprawling hills and burnt out patches of fire-breaks, our little car dodged past the flank of a slowly moving cow, followed closely by the rest of the herd and a shepherd with a whip. At some stage during the afternoon, the boys had fallen asleep. Soon afterwards, we turned right onto a dirt road to the farm.

I was relieved. It’s no mean feat travelling long-distances with a one and two year old: who need constant entertainment, feeding or both. Nuts, biltong, Provita. Puppet shows starring a bear and a doll (whom my oldest would demand also had to be fed at intervals of his specification). Better me than him though, because the other day found me foraging out porridge from the mouth of his battery-operated toy dog.

I digress.

The farm was a stop in time. We played tennis, took long walks together with my friend and her family and picked spinach, spring onion and carrots from an opulent vegetable garden for the evening’s spaghetti bolognese. The little collection of moments had been what my soul had needed. And there was space. So much of it. Land outside the kitchen window. A sky, which in the summer months would be laden with the dark of thunder. And I was indebted to these moments. They were ones that couldn’t be bought, or booked with a travel agent. They had to be created. 

On Tuesday we waved our goodbyes, and headed for Berghaven Lodge in the Southern Drakensburg. Again, the self-catering unit was price-worthy: R950 for a three bedroomed house, with fireplace. We had gone shopping for food in Ladysmith, and we weren’t short of delectables for the next three days (which included T-bone steak).

That afternoon we took a short walk onto the dirt road leading off the premises. There we met an English farmer, burning a fire-break on his land. With time to chat, he told us a little about the local vegetation, and how he couldn’t work near the perimeter of his property after 3pm because if he did, his neighbour would invite him over for an afternoon beer. It was the kind of problem and lifestyle you (almost) wanted to trade for instantly. ‘Thou shalt not covert’ was proving to be a difficult command.

Day three was my happy birthday, and I asked to spend it at Cathedral Peak hotel. We played a civilised game of bowls, then tennis…all the while having to relocate the boys off the court. But they crawled and played, a I served past their little moving heads. Skill.

Lunch was ordered from an a la carte menu. It was essentially pub lunch: bangers and mash, a basket of fish and chips and macaroni and cheese for the boys. English food, the kind the queen would have approved of on her royal visit. I’m actually convinced that she set the menu when she had visited the area in 1947. Pictures if their royal highnesses still adorn the corridor walls: black and white images of something long forgotten, but for which the hotel will always be proud of. It’s part of their heritage. Who they were, and who they will always be. And that’s Natal. 

Driving through Pietermaritzburg on the way back to Durban the next day, we stopped at the KwaZulu-Natal National Botanical Garden for a picnic lunch of bread, cheese and tomato. Though the dead of winter, the afternoon was balmy, and promised of the summer to come. Bees flew between flowers, as the boys picked up stones from the path and collected them like little findings. A long row of trees marked the centre of the gardens, with a bell at the beginning (which four pre-schoolers kept ringing, and running away from). They ran with the freedom of knowing their mother was picnicking in the garden not far away with a friend. Unconstrained by home-work and after school curricula which in the city, we seem so obsessed with. Their legs took unrestricted strides, as they chased one another over sand and jungle gyms, across the lawn and down a path.  And back to the bell, to ring it just one last time. It sounded like a church, in the middle of a tropical garden with trees old enough to tell of those who had planted them: probably in long skirts and bowler hats.

The night before, my birthday had culminated with my husband picking a twig from outside in the dark of the night, lighting it as it stood in a piece of chocolate nougat and singing happy birthday in a hushed tone, so as not to wake up the boys. The next day, on arriving back at my sisters little home: I walked into a surprise birthday tea. With a five week old son, she had managed to bake a chocolate cake, wrap my chicken dish present and blow enough balloons to make me clap with delight. They sang. I made a wish. 

And that’s Natal. It’s the memories you make: old and new. It’s the people who live there. The time and space. It’s the ice-cream truck that still drives through the streets of Hillcrest, playing that same 90’s tune. It’s the North beach Sunday market: where you can buy a stick of R5 sugar cane for your boys, or a 10 minute neck and shoulders massage for R20. It’s the advertising along the road to ‘find your lost love’. It’s the best curry at The Little Indian Restaurant, where one of the patronshadstood over us to make sure we dished Zach enough rice.

And that’s Natal. It’s her unpredictability. Her contentment to be discovered, but her nonchalance if she is not. It’s her dare to embrace, but I don’t care if you don’t.

With love.