Origination

Searching for clues

I am looking for the Deeds Office on Plein Street. There’s a huge imposing building that looks official, so I go in through the rotating doors and the security check and ask if I’m in the right place. The man at the desk tells me to go to the thirteenth floor. There, I wait for my number to be called as a smelly gentleman talks incessantly to me about his claim on his late mother’s house. Finally, I am summonsed to the enquiry counter by the moustachioed Eugene. I tell him I am looking for ownership records of the farms around Darling from the 1930s. He tells me I must go to the Surveyor General office on the 11^th floor to find out the numbers of the farms. Downstairs there is more waiting as a guy uses a confusing computer program to try and match up the names I give him with numbers allocated to each plot of land. Finally I am equipped with the information and I head back to Eugene, to give him the numbers.

I am handed a huge heavy volume full of carefully handwritten deeds showing the ownership of the farms around Malmesbury & Darling from the 1900s-1950s. I go through each of the farms in the Kikoesvlei area, looking for evidence of the Beinarts. We thought that possibly Woolf might have owned some of the land where the Salt Pans are located. The documents are fascinating, but bear no Beinart fruit. However, I realise that Mr Basson, the farmer who kindly showed us the salt pans, is part of a family who has owned land in that area for over 100 years.

I leave the building with no further clues as to exactly which pan our Great-Grandfather would have harvested salt from, but with the satisfaction of feeling like a detective.

Rebecca Beinart

Oh! Darling..

Visiting the State archives on Roeland St, we find our way through the many keys and locks to a bare room with empty desks and piles of brown cardboard boxes. Eventually we suss the form filling system and order up documents, pertaining to our great-grandfather Woolf Beinart and his business interests. We hit a goldmine: the Darling Salt Pans and Produce Company, Ltd., was evidentially a going concern circa 1929 and there are a multitude of polite letters back and forward in his scratchy handwriting on headed paper, assuring the planning department of the hygienic nature of skin-preserving. We also find a blueprint for a railway siding at Kikoesvlei, near Darling, where he had his salt stores…

So on Saturday we set off to Darling, and firstly visit the Darling Museum, home of South Africa’s foremost Butter-making artefact collection. There we find more evidence of Beinarts in the area, as there was a Beinart tailors in Darlings’ early days. From Darling we head north down a dirt track to Kikoesvlei, which consists of a railway siding and a sign. We look for evidence but find nothing, and so we head to the nearby farm. The farmer turns out to know the local history, and takes us to the site where he says the salt stores were, in his 4 x 4, past the Ostrich farm. There we find some remains of foundations, and a house on a pole, which he says is an owl house. They encourage the owls to live there to eat the mice that eat the wheat. Organic pest control.

Then we drive past a huge dairy farm (not so organic) to Koekiespan, another farm, and the site of a salt pan. It is an eerie, uncanny place, a vast stretch of white emptiness under the blue sky. You walk onto it and it feels like desert, but also like ice, and you feel it could give way at any moment. I take photographs and the light is blinding. I feel a bit like I have landed on the moon.

We collect the salt and add to our collection of envelopes, started with salt from the decks of the ships where sea-water has pooled and evaporated, leaving white crystals in patterns on the green paintwork.

Katy Beinart

Homecoming

From the immigration office, we were picked up by Robyn, a friendly tour guide who drove us to our new home in Observatory, a quirky suburb west of the city centre. We arrived at the house in Alfred Street where we met two of our fellow visiting artists: Emmet (from London) and Evelyn (from Holland). This is to be our home for the next three months. In the front garden, an old hammock hangs under a Frangipani tree, but it looks like it might collapse if you were to actually sit on it. In the back yard, an avocado tree overhangs the wall, with promising green fruit that we hope will ripen before we have to leave.

On Monday we went to Greatmore studios, to be welcomed by Mishkaah and given the tour by Aunty Yvonne. There’s a lot to take in, especially after our confinement on the ship, but it’s great to finally be here. We start to occupy our studio, filling the walls with ideas, drawings and texts. We meet some of the other artists and Kim arrives from Namibia, also staying at Alfred Street. We have a house excursion to an opening at Joao Ferriera gallery, for a show by Leon Botha and Gordon Clark, which is an intense introduction to the South African art world. Or perhaps one facet of it.

Katy & Rebecca Beinart

Arrival

On Sunday 10^th January 2010, twenty-five days after leaving Antwerp, the Green Cape docked in Cape Town. Our arrival faithfully imitated the journey: nothing was going to happen in a hurry.

On Saturday, Table Mountain appeared, distant and hazy on the horizon. We watched all day as it grew larger and more solid, the city eventually becoming visible at the base of the mountain. We dropped anchor in Table Bay and spent twenty hours waiting for a space in the harbour. We had a fantastic view of Table Mountain and watched as the sun set and the lights of Cape Town gradually twinkled into life. I was reminded of the writing of a Jewish migrant who had made this journey in the 1900s:

“ We were more than pleased when our wandering had come to an end. The ship now lay peacefully in the harbour and our wonder grew as we looked at Table Mountain with its tremendous tablecloth of cloud. It was one of the most magnificent sights I had seen in my life…” Moishe Levin¹

At 2pm on Sunday, the ship docked in the harbour, and we lined up our bags, ready to disembark. As soon as the Captain allowed it, we triumphantly left the ship, skipping down the rickety steps to stand on South African soil. Several hours later, we were still sitting on the harbour-side, waiting for a mythical taxi that was supposed to take us to immigration. Eventually, the second mate appeared, and explained that our ride wouldn’t arrive until 6pm due to mysterious circumstances involving paperwork for drivers entering the port. He persuaded us to get back on board and have a final drink with the crew. We started to feel like we’d never leave: that we were a permanent fixture of the Green Cape. We sat in the kitchen drinking a vodka-based beverage with the cooks, half-laughing half-crying at our predicament. But at 6pm we were finally put in the back of a pick-up truck and taken to a decrepit, imposing 1970s building that houses the immigration office. Our passports were checked and stamped, and we were officially in South Africa.

Rebecca Beinart

1From Eastern Europe to South Africa: Memories of an Epic Journey 1880 – 1937, Gwynne Schrire

Bread and Salt

Reading the accounts of Jewish migrants who made this journey over 100 years ago, we are struck with their apparent obsession with food. They describe the barrels of pickled herring and potatoes that sustain them through the journey, and sometimes complain of a lack of understanding for their dietary needs. We add a category to our daily logbook, recording the food we eat each day, and pretty soon we start to understand what an important part of the voyage this is. Meal times on the boat are strictly timed, and we must eat what we’re given or not eat at all. The meals in the officer’s mess offer us our main daily interaction with other people. The menu is Polish, and heavily based around meat and potatoes, which is challenging for me as a vegetarian. On one occasion I am presented with a plate of potatoes accompanied by a large boiled carrot, proudly presented to imitate a steak. It makes us realise what a fundamental part of our culture and identity food is.

We have brought with us the bread culture we started a few months ago. It was transported in the bread-making suitcase that Katy created and since our arrival on the ship it has sat in a tupperware in the fridge of our cabin, smelling distinctly. It is perhaps our most unusual piece of luggage. Artist Eva Bakkeslett writes about bread culture as a physical and metaphorical model for culture. She writes: ‘The word culture comes from the Latin words cultura – meaning to cultivate – to prepare the ground for something to emerge out of… It is interesting that the word culture is used both for human culture and fermented foods, which have been a vital way to preserve and enhance food for centuries. Culture is alive. It breathes and moves and develops a structure, given the right conditions and a portion of TLC.’¹

On Christmas day, we decide to make some of own sourdough bread. We are given permission to use the ship’s galley, and Katy mixes our dough whilst I record her. The strip-lighted stainless steel room is a strange backdrop for this domestic process, and the bread-making begins to look like a soviet-era instructional video. We leave the dough to prove, and return later in the day to bake the bread. As usual, Niko offers advice on what we should do and how we should do it. But the loaves come out perfectly, and the crew are happy to have fresh bread with dinner.

Spending three weeks aboard a ship makes us aware of the importance of food preservation. Before huge freezers could be loaded with as much meat as a Polish chef desired, salted food would have been a necessity. Mark Kurlansky writes of salt’s ability to preserve: it’s ability to protect against decay, as well as to sustain life, has given salt a broad metaphorical importance – we associate it with longevity and permanence.’² He writes about rituals that use bread and salt: ‘Bringing bread and salt to a new home is a Jewish tradition dating back to the middle ages.’³ We create our own bread and salt ceremony to mark the thresholds we cross on our journey. When we cross the equator, we take our Lithuanian black bread down to the deck, and each eat a piece, dipped in salt, to quietly celebrate ‘crossing the line’. On our long-awaited arrival at Cape Town harbour, we repeat this ritual, sitting on suitcases at the harbour-side watching cranes unloading cargo from the ships.

Rebecca Beinart

1 Cultural Fermentation: A talk by Eva Bakkeslett, 2008

2 Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky

3 Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky