The Griqua's Apprentice. Ancient healing arts of the Karoo, by Antoinette Pienaar

The Griqua's Apprentice. Ancient healing arts of the Karoo, by Antoinette Pienaar.

After a seven-year apprenticeship, Antoinette Pienaar, in her book 'The Griqua's Apprentice. Ancient healing arts of the Karoo' now writes about the healing powers of Karoo herbs.

Antoinette Pienaar  

When the Karoo was still water

It is at night, especially, that the silence of the Great Karoo wakes you up. When that silence echoes from the whitewashed walls of my small house on the hill, I rise stiffly from my bed, light the twelve candles in my candelabrum and gaze out into the night, mesmerised by the quietness dripping down from the stars. It is at night, in this silence, punctuated by Gys the rain grasshopper, chanting for the rain that might be on the way, that I lay out the words like pebbles. Words about how I came to live at Theefontein seven years ago now, learning the stories, the myths and the secrets of the Karoo at Oom Johannes's knee. It is in this silence that the huge ironstones sing from the fullness of their hearts about the time when the Karoo was still wet, the time when the dry bleached earth lapped and swished from rock to rock with water and strange fish. The rock bears this dim memory of water and, if you press your ear against any of these vast boulders, you can hear the heartbeat of the primal colossus as he remembers the water. And so, if you are born in the Karoo, you are born with the memory of water. It pulses strongly through your veins, and when you are woken by the silence, you can feel the pressure of that ancient water under your heart. It is in this desolate silence that Oom Johannes Willemses's stories come alive again, playing themselves out, one by one before me, like a flickering black-and-white film leaping and dancing through the projector. Stories that open out this primal landscape like an ancient picture book, while inquisitive geckos scuttle down the wall to see if I can also hear the silence. Just yesterday again, while Oom Johannes and I were out walking in the veld, collecting herbs, he suddenly stopped beside a large mountain tortoise, studied him intently and said, "Without the tortoises we wouldn't get a drop of rain." When I looked at him questioningly, he explained that tortoises were the first animals to pray in times of drought. Creeping in under a bush, the mountain tortoise would go down on his knees to ask for rain for the animals and the plant roots. He would stay like that, praying until the distant thoughts of rain reached his nose on the wind. So this is how you will find me of a night at Theefontein, under the candles in my candelabrum. When the flames flutter wildly in the wind, my head and shoulders are spattered with wax patterns. You will find me here, paging through my Karoo picture book, turning the stories over one by one like pebbles, and laying a footpath of memories, as Hansel and Gretel did once upon a time. But my path is not out of the forest, but deeper into the dark, fathomless mysteries of the Great Karoo. (...)

This is an excerpt from the book: The Griqua's Apprentice. Ancient healing arts of the Karoo, by Antoinette Pienaar.

Title: The Griqua's Apprentice
Subtitle: Ancient healing arts of the Karoo
Author: Antoinette Pienaar
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Umuzi
Cape Town, South Africa 2009
ISBN 9781415200735 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0073-5
Softcover, 15x23 cm, 243 pages, many colour photos