On Saturday we went to Eugenie’s house warming. We’ve been meaning to have a house warming for the past two and a half years, but there was always something: As soon as we are done with the stoep, (that’s what we call a veranda here in Africa) … as soon as we’re done with the pantry …. as soon as we are done with the new bathroom … we need to get the ceilings done. And so the months crept past…It is so nice to see what she’s done with the house. Skye’s reply to Ulrich, when he asked her what the house looked like, was a breathless: “It’s so beautiful.” Strangely enough, I looked at this pretty little house, standing on its own little hill framed by the Milky Way, and there was no connection. I have moved on.
When we arrived the fires were already burning. The traditional South African barbeque (braai) is something to appreciate. In this particular case two deboned legs of game (Springbok) were the main features on the menu. One was marinated in buttermilk and the other in red wine. There were some artfully done salads, chocolate brownies for desert and a selection of wines, cheeses and bread.
I am a vegetarian and so I naturally gave the meats a wide berth and took myself some bread. The bread was brown, like earth after rain, cut in chunky slices. As I was looking at the cheeses trying to decide which ones to try, I bit into the bread. The slightly sourness sparkled on my tongue and caused a tiny fireworks display of happy hormones to be triggered somewhere on the inside of my head. If anyone did see my expression at that point I’m sure they’d have though I had too much wine. I must’ve looked dazed at least. I realized that this is not the kind of bread you can eat standing up and I went to sit down under the stars a little apart from the crowd, with my single slice of bread on a plate.
The next bite was part crust. The crust was the perfect balance of crunchy and chewy. Like tasty gift wrap around the perfect gift. It spoke to my Pagan Soul. “From the sun to the Earth, from the Earth to the grain, from the grain to us, Great Mother, we thank you for this blessing. I could taste the sun and the wind and the wisdom of the Earth which grew this perfect grain in dark secrecy.
At this point Mathe and Hans arrived. They are both German, and both of them have beautiful stories of their own, which I might tell you later. They came over and sat down next to me and Mathe turned this slice of bread into a story. Mathe and I got to know each other better, sadly, only a short while ago, when she asked me to teach her to speak Afrikaans. She already speaks four languages fluently. We exchanged the normal pleasantries, chatted over this and that and at some point Hans left with one of their twin girls. Mathe reached over and broke a piece off the slice of bread on my plate ate it and said: “You know I baked this bread?” In her lovely gently rolling German accented English. “It takes twenty-four hours to make.” It made perfect sense, nothing less for something this perfect. “I love working with dough, the feel of it in my hands,” she said and continued: “All it is, is flour and water and salt. And also the yeast, it is natural sour dough, I make it over several days and I have to feed it regularly. Working with dough like this, is like magic.”
She told me she wants to build a wood burning oven, at the moment she “does all kinds of things” with her oven to make the bread taste like it’s done in a wood burning oven. “That is my dream, “she said, “to have my own little artisan bakery. You gave it to me, you know. We sat here on your stoep, and you told me, I have to have a dream.”
I smiled as I remembered: I told her of a Bushman (Khoi-San) I met many many years ago, who when I asked him how old he was, said he didn’t know; Numbers were not important to him. He said he is as old as his greatest achievement and as young as his fondest dream. And there under the stars, sharing magic bread with a beautiful soul who has a dream, I thought it’s time for me to get myself a new dream.
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