FIND YOUR SPARK IN TONTELDOOS
Tonteldoos is not your average community. Folks do call it a town but, in fact, it does not really qualify, although there are those who speak of a CBD. It’s really more of a place, but you’re never quite clear on exactly where this place starts and where it ends. There is a main street – one long dirt road – where about five houses and the same number of businesses (with plenty of space separating them) slumber under the starry sky. There’s not even an NG church, but there is a Catholic church a stone’s throw from “the CBD.”
The inhabitants of Tonteldoos live on parcels of land that were measured out along streams in the area after the unstable era of the Mapoch wars and the Anglo-Boer wars had come to an end. There was a school at one time, but it closed its doors at the end of the previous millennium after earning the dubious distinction of a 100% failure rate.
At the general dealer or the bottle store or the coffee shop – or on a Wednesday evening in High-Side Tavern, where the locals gather to chat over a burger and a beer – someone will inform you that “about 38 people” live in this corner of Limpopo. But, among the green hills and red rocks and golden-yellow arum lilies, you will also find a few hundred souls who eke out an existence with donkeys and cattle and firewood collected from the veld… and very little money indeed.
Even the name is unusual. Note the bemused expressions on most people’s faces when you
