What are you doing this International Coffee Day?!

Heritage Day (Public Holiday)

Celebrate South African cultural diversity

Heritage day (24 September), also known as National Braai Day as the result of a pointed 2005 media campaign, was not originally intended to be an official South African public holiday. But when the Inkatha Freedom Party, a political party with a large Zulu membership, refused to sign the Public Holiday’s Bill that was being presented to the Parliament of South Africa because it omitted the inclusion of Shaka Day, a day that commemorated the famous Zulu King Shaka, a concession was made.

Quite aptly, just as King Shaka  was instrumental in uniting Zulu clans into a cohesive nation, Heritage Day (appointed in place of King Shaka Day) encourages South Africans to  come together to celebrate the rich cultural heritage and the diversity of our rainbow nation.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela concisely explained it when he said the following in a Heritage Day speech: "When our first democratically-elected government decided to make Heritage Day one of our national days, we did so because we knew that our rich and varied cultural heritage has a profound power to help build our new nation”.

Things to do this Heritage Day
Whether you’re looking into celebrating your heritage in a special way or simply looking for something to do, we’ve developed a good overview of Heritage Day activities. Now, unofficially known as Braai Day – thanks to the efforts of Jan Braai – families, friends and strangers unite at various events around the country celebrating South Africa’s unique heritage and building bridges to overcome its painful past by chucking a tjoppie on the fire. 

French Lonely Planet Magazine

Chrislin African Lodge in the French Lonely Planet Magazine, December 2013 - January 2014

Travelling together as a family in Addo?Couples travelling together?

Chrislin African Lodge has a Sunset Hut waiting just for you! 

The Sunset huts are ideal for families and couples travelling together as they are made up of 2 en-suite rooms joined by inter-leading doors. There are 3 units, each sleeping 2x2 people with the possibility of an extra person in each room sleeping on a sleeper couch.

Features:

·       King and Twin beds (can be converted to Queen size bed)

·       Sleeper couches for children under the age of 12

·       Lounge area

·       En-suite bathroom with shower and toilet

·       tea & coffee making facilities

·       bar fridges

·       ceiling fans

·       alarm clock/radio's

·       hair dryers

·       small verandah

The Women's Institute in the Sundays River Valley - an extract

Sundays River Valley Women’s Institute

This year, 2014, the Sundays River Valley Women’s Institute is 91 years old.

Johnny Briggs kindly shared Vivienne Gruskin’s speech at the 80th Annual General Meeting of the WI in 2003. It was her 60^th year as a member. I read her speech and have tried to extract the essence of her experience of the WI.

- Madam Chair, Fellow Members of the Women’s Institute and Guests –

I welcome this opportunity to share my memories with you all. This year, the Women’s Institute will be 80 years old. This year will be 60 years since I came to the Valley as a bride.

Hardly had we arrived back in Addo (Mr & Mrs Gruskin, from their honeymoon), hardly had I had time to take in, what for me were new and strange surroundings, hardly had I had time to empty the sea sand out of my sandals, when my mother-in-law, Judith Margaret Gruskin, 15 years Treasurer to the Institute, said “Now you must join the Women’s Institute”. The Women’s WHAT? I walked into the Valentine Hall and saw these rows of women – hat, bag and gloves, not hats (demonstration of ‘fancy’) but hats (demonstration of ‘plain and solid’), and I thought “Oh my goodness, they’re all so old!” I felt very young, very inadequate, and I don’t think I opened my mouth for 3 years!

The hall that I walked into that day was very different from the hall today. There it stood, four square to the winds that blow, built by the women of the Valley, built by Women’s Institute members – never forget that. Geraldine Jordi in her book ‘Settlers in our Valley’, writes that every institute member had to raise the sum of £1 (R2) over the period of one year – and how difficult they found this in those hard times, and Valentine Magniac our founder, would not allow them to ask the men for help – they had to do it themselves. So they started in 1925 and slowly and painfully, by 1930 their hall was built and ready. It took them 5 years, and I say, all honour to them.

If I were to highlight the difference between the meetings of yesterday and today, I would say that today’s are more relaxed and informal. We stood up and addressed the chair, never by name, but as Madam Chair. We also dressed more formally in our afternoon dresses, and stockings, summer and winter.

In the chair at the time I joined, was Mrs. Anne Hutton, a remarkable woman – nine times she took the chair in the Institute. An academic, classics scholar, former militant suffragette in the fight for women’s rights, an M.A.Edinburgh – a prestigious degree in those days even as it is today, she had also studied at Leipzig in Germany and Poitiers in France. But she had one disadvantage – she was very deaf. And so, when someone stood up to address the chair and did not speak up, the information had to be relayed from row to row until it reached Mrs. Hutton’s cupped ear.

Anne Hutton and Molly Higgins were both foundation members of the Institute and were also personal friends of our founder, Valentine Magniac. They decided we must honour her memory. So we commissioned a sculptress and she created the plaque on the outside back wall. A number of members didn’t like the plaque, they said the figures were distorted and grotesque – but I think it has stood the test of time and the new art forms very well. Besides, I believe Miss Magniac was rather shapeless and certainly very untidy.

When I look at the photo (of the plaque), I realized that all but three of us have passed on to the great Institute in the sky, with the notable exception of Mrs. Maisie Lewis. Later she became secretary of the Institute and wrote the amazing Minutes – so detailed; every cough and sneeze was recorded. If someone stood up and put forward a proposal, her name was recorded, and if someone objected or made a counter-proposal, her name was mentioned as well. We called it “being mentioned in dispatches” and I sometimes think there was so much unnecessary chit-chat at meetings, because members liked to hear their names mentioned in the Minutes!

I often wonder, looking back, why did the members fight so much at our meetings? Why were they always fraught with tension? Why did we all go home with headaches? – I know I did and probably resorted, in those days, to Bacons Headache Powders in those pink boxes. I wonder, were they repressed at home that they vented their spleen on the meetings, or were they merely menopausal?. From now on I shall call them the Yappers, after that expression dating from the old days of desert travel – “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on”. I see that Geraldine Jordi calls the Women’s Institute meetings of her day – “The stronghold and the battlefield of Valley womanhood” – I like that!

I shall now fast forward to 1970-1971, the years of the Big Drought, and Grace de Kock comes into the chair. By now the hall was much more elegant – the annexe alterations, red velvet stage curtains donated by the Addo Playreading Society but – we still have the long drop, the earth closet! Grace de Kock decided it was now time we had water-borne sewerage and an elegant ladies’ rest room. Well! That had the Yappers on their feet! ‘How can you possibly contemplate a building project in this terrible drought. If any money is available it should be spent on the under-privileged in these hard times’. And so the arguments thundered forth, meeting after meeting. Then one day Lucille Kirby stood up. Lucille Kirby was a greatly loved primary school teacher at Sunland School. She seldom got to her feet to express an opinion, but when she did, people listened to her. By this time we were having visiting speakers at our meetings. Lucille said, ‘At the last meeting, the speaker asked if she could be taken to the toilet. So with great embarrassment I took her to our earth closet. She then asked if she could wash her hands. So with greater embarrassment I took her through to the kitchen sink! If we are to have outsiders come and visit us, we must improve our toilet facilities so that we can receive them without shame or embarrassment’. And she swayed the meeting, and the Yappers were silenced and Grace de Kock could go ahead, with the help of Gibby Londt, a local architect, and install waterborne sewerage in our elegant ladies’ rest room. We were so proud of this – it was such an occasion.

And now I would like to let you in on the Great Teenage Morals Scandal, in which Bert and I were unwittingly involved. The Institute decided, in order to liven up the school holidays, they would allow the Valentine Hall to be used for dances, or hops, whatever they called them then – but that these had to be adequately chaperoned. So Bert and I volunteered, or rather, I suppose I volunteered and the poor chap was dragged along. We came to the hall and the boys sat on one side and the girls sat on the other side, and never the twain did meet. Eventually a few couples took to the floor, and I recall one couple who remained in a clinch after the music had stopped – sort of swaying in the breeze. And I can see Bert, like an angry boxing referee, advancing on them and shouting, “That’s enough, break it up, break it up”. He also continually had to go outside and haul in the couples who had slipped out – not allowed! But the evening did not get off the ground – it was deadly dull. Then some of the teenagers approached us and suggested we dim the lights a little, then people might dance. So we left the annexe lights on, we left the stoep light on, and we slightly dimmed the hall lights. We could see everything that went on and, besides, Bert was constantly patrolling the hall like a restless border collie! Then the dance really took off and was really successful. Towards the end of the evening a mother came to fetch her child. She sat talking to us for a while but never, by look, word or gesture, did she indicate that she was not comfortable or unhappy with the set-up. A few days after the dance, we heard, as one hears things in the Valley, whisper-whisper-whisper, mutter-mutter, that we had encouraged teenage misbehaviour by allowing them to dance in the dark! We were astonished, and my husband was angry because a more conservative chap you couldn’t wish to meet. We decided to put our side of the story to the Institute, and as there was a committee meeting coming up, we decided to go along. Bert called it “facing the military tribunal” and I must say, I took off my hat to him for facing all those women. We put our case – said the hall had never been dark, the lights had only been dimmed; that we were fully in control of the evening; and that if the mother had found things not to her liking, why had she not spoken out there and then instead of spreading gossip later. And of course they understood, and of course the whole thing was a load of rubbish, but the damage had been done. The Institute could not afford to be associated with anything regarding teenage behaviour. As one women said. “You never know what they will put in their cool-drink bottles!” SO the dances were stopped forthwith and the teenagers lost out.

The early settlers started the Playreading Society, and we revived it after the war. We stood under the umbrella of our parent society, the Women’s Institute. The WI was supposed, by nature of its constitution to promote art and culture – and I suppose we were the culture! We put on play-readings once a month during the winter, and these were very well supported as they were the only form of organised entertainment at the time. For five shillings (50 cents) a year the whole family was covered. SO we had a very volatile audience, ranging form the noisy front row where the little kids say – their parents were supposed to control them but this didn’t often happen – to the lively back rows where the teenagers sat – mostly boarders home for leave-out or on holiday. In any case they were more interested in one another, and their romances, than they were in the play. I recall two incidents. It was a mystery play and the body had to fall out of a cupboard with a dull thud. The little Naude boy ran straight from his seat up to the stage, waving his arms and shouting, “Daddy! Daddy! That’s my Daddy!” Of course the audience roared and I don’t know how the corpse controlled his laughter. On another occasion it was a murder play, a thriller, and I was on the stage, the light was dim and the murderer was creeping up behind me, when the irrepressible Peter Slement yelled out, “Hey, hey, hey! Look behind you!” The hall exploded, and I can’t remember how we got the tension back in the play.

The advent of TV knocked everything on the head – not only in the Valley, not only countrywide, but worldwide, amateur theatre bit the dust.

And now, ladies, when I look at this hall, I see my entire 60 years in the Valley, woven into its fabric. I see myself as a bride, young, slim, enthusiastic, intent on building up the Playreading Society and raising a young family. The I see the encroaching mists of Middle Age, from 40 onwards - not so slim, still enthusiastic, probably my worst productive years and the Institute’s as well. We certainly created our own entertainment in those years. I see the mannequin parades using local models; I see the teenage mannequin parades, arranged and scripted by themselves and modelling their own clothes; I see the crowded hall on Quiz Evenings for Institute funds, with Ken Woolley as Quizmaster (I always made sure I was on the panel that set the questions so I wouldn’t have to answer them on stage); I see the many competitions – make a hat from 2 sheets of newspaper – make a hat from kitchen utensils and vegetables.

I also see wonderful flower shows in the 1950’s with large floral arrangements, a section for children, and also a cookery section – arranged by the Sunland Women’s Agricultural Association and ourselves – fiercely competitive, trophies awarded. Among the Big Guns of those days were Bertha Coetzee, Mrs. Mat Smith, Girlie Meiring, Evelyn Pike, Andora Bengough, Olive Gibb, Rina Plumstead. In those days if your arrangement didn’t have a focal point, you didn’t go home with a trophy! I can see Mrs. Pike’s pride and joy, the Children’s Arts and Craft competitions, also arranged by the school, the W.A.A and ourselves attracting hundreds of entries, where the children were encouraged in portraying art in various categories, and also to make things with their hands in various categories. Many Valley children discovered, for the first time, their true potential through those competitions. And so much more… And now, despite all my efforts, and with extreme reluctance I have entered rickety old age, where I have been forced to become more a spectator, than a participator. In this era I see Rose Day after beautiful Rose Day, where our spectacular exhibits have brought fame to our Valley, and our hall, nationally and internationally. If ever you flower arrangers grow tired and dispirited, as I am sure you often do, think of the man, the visitor to Rose Day, who stood in the hall and said to Penny Rogers and Ruth Miller, “This is so beautiful. I could die in here!”

I can see, passing before me, a constant procession of more that 20 chairladies I have known, each one leaving her own particular stamp on the Institute. I see the secretaries, the treasurers, the committee members, who have helped to uphold the fabric of the Institute. I pay tribute to the husbands who have supported the Institute in its many endeavours. I recall, with admiration, the era of the Big Spenders who had the vision, and the financial backing thanks to Rose Day, and the absence of Yappers, to effect major and necessary alterations to our hall. I recall in more recent times, the names of Penny Rogers, Glenda Robinson, Phrosne Riggs, Barbara Burton and Marina van der Westhuizen…

In a final plea to you all, I say, “Don’t let the Women’s Institute die out, as so much in our Valley has died out”. Thanks to Rose Day, it is today a vibrant, thriving organization with the ability to grow and change. It has also the financial clout to be a power of good in the Valley. Without wanting to sound stuffy or conservative, which I hope I’m not, I say to you, support your Institute by coming regularly to the meetings. Don’t look at the next speaker and say, “I’m not interested in that”. It is your input and your talents. To adapt the famous words of President Kennedy, “Think not what the Institute can do for you, but what you can do for the Institute”.

Vivienne Gruskin

May 2003