The Cape’s First Doctor

“As part of becoming a woman, after her first menstruation a San maiden would have had her body rubbed with eland fat mixed with buchu.” This was one of a string of intriguing bits of indigenous information from San rock art specialist David van der Westhuizen that got me hooked on the buchu trail.

But let me give you the back story. David trained at the Living Landscape Project in Clanwilliam. He’s a guide now at the Cederberg Ridge Wilderness Lodge, outside Clanwilliam and, on a tour through the veld, shared his prodigious knowledge of rock art, artists and the society in which they lived. But every now and then he’d stop at a plant, rub its leaves and, gazing into the