Braai4Heritage tour: Day 31 – Qunu, Nelson Mandela’s childhood playground

Posted on 13 April 2011

We woke up to arguably the best breakfast of the Braai4Heritage tour so far. It’s always good to see a fruit salad buffet when you’re on a braai tour, and this was certainly one of the better ones we’ve had on this trip. After our late arrival it was great to wake up refreshed in The Old Orchard’s morning sunlight, especially as the lovely owner Cheran didn’t seem to hold any grudge from our late arrival the night before.

It was about a three hour drive through heavy Eastern Cape traffic to our main stop of the day – the Nelson Mandela Museum in the small rural village of Qunu.

In fact Qunu, as we discovered, isn’t really a village at all, but rather a collection of smaller villages dotting the hills either side of the narrow Qunu River, 25 kilometres south west of Mthatha. 18 smaller communities together make up the amalgamation that is Qunu, and it was in this valley and over these hills that South Africa’s most famous and revered statesman grew up and first went to school in the early and mid-1920’s.

The school where Mandela received his primary education – previously a mission school, now Qunu Junior Secondary – is still running and lies just 200 metres away from the new museum across a tree-lined, grassy field. It was at this school that Mandela was first given his Christian name “˜Nelson,’ the standard practice of missionary schools of the time being to give all students a European first name on their first day in class. Mandela himself was born 38 kilometres to the south east of Qunu and after being released from jail built himself a house there, true to his well-documented belief that a man should always have a home within sight of the place he was born.

We met our friendly and accommodating guide, Zimisile Gamakulu, at the entrance to the museum and took our time strolling around while he pointed out the significance and stories behind the various artworks and installations on display. The museum has two main exhibition rooms, an arts and crafts centre and conference facilities, all housed in excellent, modern buildings. The exhibition rooms are minimalist and well maintained, the first room containing large, well drawn comic-strip storyboards detailing the life and achievements of its hugely respected patron, and the second with artifacts from Mandela’s early years as well as artwork from some of the Eastern Cape’s young, up and coming artists.

After 2 hours in the museum grounds and a good half an hour trying out the famous rock slide where Mandela is said to have played as a boy, we were back on the road and heading for Mthatha.

I hadn’t been to Mthatha before and wasn’t really sure what to expect. I must admit I’m still not really sure what the main town is like – when you arrive at an oasis like Green Park Lodge it becomes hard to leave. We pulled in to find Christine, our hostess, busy in the kitchen preparing salads and puddings and a massive potato bake, all in readiness, and without our asking, for the evening’s braai she had kindly agreed to host.

As has been the pattern the last few days, the rain soon caught up with us and within an hour of our arrival it was coming down hard, eventually settling into a lighter drizzle that continued off and on throughout the afternoon and into the night.

It didn’t deter us though.

Jan whipped up an excellent tandoori paste for the lamb chops using the masala mix we’d picked up in Durban a few days previously and this along with the other excellent dishes provided by Christine made for one of the tastiest, most well-balanced braai’s so far.

After a good night’s sleep were off to East London the following morning.

Qunu guide:
Zimisile Gamakulu, cel 084 396 8306

Day 30 | Day 31






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