Insight-driven growth for business and lifestyle
Chesney Bradshaw
In one of the small Karoo towns we drove around looking for a place to get something to eat en route to the coast. A friendly stranger at a service station gave us directions to a small cafe where he said that the food would be good. We were not disappointed.
In fact, the hamburgers and chips were wholesome and tasty. Better than anything we could have bought from the large fast-food chains which were in any event absent from this town. Continue reading “Lessons from Karoo country life”
In recent months I have travelled through the Richtersveld in the Northern Cape and the Karoo in the Western Cape. Vast expanses, unique flora and hardy, friendly people who live and work in these semi-desert regions.
When you arrive in the small town of Philipstown, De Aar, Carnarvon, Calvinia, Laingsburg, Beaufort West and Hanover, you are stuck by the large number of young people, unemployed people begging for money and the mostly run-down retail shopping areas.
A young man hitch-hiked from Cape Town to the Eastern Free State to attend a funeral in a rural area. He can’t afford the taxi bus fare because the price has gone up. The rising fuel price is bringing the return of the hitch hiker.
A craft shop in Hanover, a pass-through town in the Karoo, displays crafted furniture, paintings and ornaments – all made with care and quality you’d previously only find in city stores. Even back water crafters have upped their game. Continue reading “From the road”
