This is simply another way of emphasizing the importance of nature, for geography and nature are not really dissimilar. Being born into this world in a particular place is like having the signature of that place stamped upon you. The essence of your place of birth cloaks and protects your walk through this life, and whatever you do becomes registered in the ledger of that geography.... Your footprints still lead back to the place where you began. Any time there is a thought or memory of the origin, or an illusion to the origin, or more specifically a prayer that addresses your roots and the nature of your origin, then vast forces in the universe are unleashed.
- Malidoma Patrice Somé, The Healing Wisdom of Africa, p.40
Ladysmith - the centre of the world’s attention, the scene of famous deeds, the cause of mighty efforts...
~ Winston Churchill, The Boer War, p.209
Ladysmith 28° 33′ 35″S, 29° 46′ 50″E
Home Farm 28° 34' 60S, 29° 36' 0E
In my last blog I introduced the thought of Psychotherapy. "Psychogeography". Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." While expressly intended for avant garde urban environments we can apply the concept to rural geographies too. Places have vibes!
Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson wrote, "The place where we grew up or currently reside is more than physical space. It defines who we are, how we think about ourselves and others, and the way we live." What about the place where one is born?
Malidoma Patrice Somé boldly asserts an African belief: "We choose not only our parents but also our place of birth."
I was born in Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (28°33′35″S 29°46′50″E) in the midst of the great battlefields of KwaZulu-Natal. My parents were living with my grandparents on Home Farm (28° 34' 60S, 29° 36' 0E) about 15 kilometres to the west of the historic town.
Home Farm, District of Ladysmith with
Dewdrop Stream meandering through (Photo: Google Earth)
Founding History
The traditional Zulu name for Ladysmith is eMnambithi - King Shaka gave this name to the Klip River after tasting the sweet water ‘mnambitheka’ - meaning ‘tasty’.
King Shaka (1785 -1828) regularly visited various chiefs and indunas from various clans in his kingdom. It was during one of these visits that he visited the area of eMnambithi. When a new area was visited, the custom at the time was to give a name to the place. In the case of this area, King Shaka drank water from the Klip river and found it to be sweet compared to the coastal water. He pointed out that the water is tasty. In isiZulu anything that is tasty is called "nambitheka". The river was then name "uMnambithi" because of its tasty water.
In 1847 after buying land from the Zulu king Mpande, a number of Boers settled in the area and called it the Republic of Klip River with Andries Spies as their commandant. The republic was annexed by the British in the same year and on 20 June 1850 was proclaimed a township called Windsor. On 11 October 1850 the name was changed to Ladysmith after Juana Maria de los Dolores de Leon Smith also known as "Lady Smith", the Spanish wife of Sir Harry Smith, the Governor of the Cape Colony. Sir Harry Smith was the British general governor of Cape Colony and high commissioner in South Africa from 1847 to 1852.
The story of Harry Smith and Juanita, a young Spanish teenage girl is one of the great love stories of South Africa. So strong was their devotion to each other that she silently endured the discomforts and danger of life on the battlefield, often having to flee for her own life.
In 1812, at the age of fourteen, she found herself orphaned and only with a sister, when her home town Badajoz was besieged for the fourth time during the Peninsular War. After the siege ended in a successful but very bloody storming by the British and Portuguese forces, the sisters sought protection from the plundering and pillaging soldiers by some British officers they found camping outside the city walls. One of them was Brigade-Major Harry Smith, of the elite 95th Rifles scout regiment, whom she married a few days later.
....
Juanita Smith and her husband are the central characters in the historic novel The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer, which spans the period from just before their meeting after the battle of Badajoz through the aftermath of the battle of Waterloo in the latter part of the Napoleonic Wars.
Juana Maria de los Dolores de Leon Smith
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
The Boer War
Following the Battle of Ladysmith (1899), with the British forces...regrouping in the town, the Boer forces decided to surrounded the town. The siege lasted 118 days, from 2 November 1899 to 28 February 1900, during the most crucial stage of the war. A total of around 3,000 British soldiers died during the siege.
Home Farm was the scene of of vicious battles
between the British and Boers including
Spionkop and Vaal Krantz
1900 Map
Home Farm was located just north of Dewdrop
west of Ladysmith in the foothills of the Drakensberg
Winston Churchill wrote: "I climbed up to see it for myself. Only eight miles away stood the poor little persecuted town, with whose fate there is wrapt up the honour of the Empire, and for whose sake so many hundred good soldiers have given life or limb--a twenty-acre patch of tin houses and blue gum trees, but famous to the uttermost ends of the earth" (London to Ladysmith Via Pretoria, p.221).
Two icons of my life date back to this time. Two RML 6.3 inch Howitzers used by the British during the Siege stand in front of the Town Hall aptly named, Castor and Pollux. I am a Gemini. The other is Mohandas Gandhi who was a stretcher bearer in Ladysmith influenced my spiritual and political thinking as a teenage. I grew up with an intense aversion for war. Early in my teen years I felt drawn to the non-violence stance of Tolstoy and the satyagraha. A statue of Mohandas Gandhi can be seen at the Lord Vishnu Temple.
Statue of Gandhi, Ladysmith
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
It was this "poor little persecuted town", if I am to take Malidoma Patrice Somé literally, that I chose to be born on the 15th June 1946. To all intents and purposes it is a little surprising to find my father and mother in Ladysmith. They had met in Vryheid, Natal and married in Ermelo, Transvaal. Then World War II separated them for nearly five years. My father was a POW in Germany. I was born nine months after his return home. During that time, Mother had moved several times living with her parents in Ermelo and the in-laws at Home Farm in the Ladysmith District. My father was only decommissioned from his unit, the Umvoti Mounted Rifles, on the 5th May 1946, a month before my birth. Two years later we had moved to a farm in the Eastern Transvaal
"Book of First Entry", Register of Midwifery, Ladysmith Library showing birth of Colin G Garvie
While we frequently visited Ladysmith for holidays even on one visit meeting Sister Sandalls, the midwife who had delivered me, Ladysmith was never much more than my port of entry into this world. William Dixon wrote, "Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of every thing" (The Human Situation, 1937). Nevertheless I could never think of Ladysmith or drive through the town on my frequent trips between Johannesburg and Durban without there being a great surge of emotion and affection.
Gate to Home Farm, Ladysmith. (Photo: Google Street View)
There was an auspicious total lunar eclipse at 9pm SAT the evening before I was born.
Star Map of the 14th June 1946 Lunar Eclipse at 21h00 SAT
(Stellarium)
Yet another remarkable anecdote. Living in Ladysmith at the time of my birth was Emily Adam (Alder). Emily passed away a year after my birth on the 16th July 1947. I was to marry Emily's great-granddaughter, Sylvia, 25 years later. Sylvia's great-grandfather was the local blacksmith and though he died in 1939 it is likely the two families knew each other. Even stranger, Sylvia's great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Adam (Fawns), and my great-great-grandfather, John Garvie, are buried in the same cemetery in Dundee, Scotland. Sylvia was born in Nigeria. It is a small, small world.
The Grave of James and Emily Adam, Ladysmith Cemetery
Somé is right when he says...
Being born into this world in a particular place is like having the signature of that place stamped upon you. The essence of your place of birth cloaks and protects your walk through this life, and whatever you do becomes registered in the ledger of that geography.... Your footprints still lead back to the place where you began. Any time there is a thought or memory of the origin, or an illusion to the origin, or more specifically a prayer that addresses your roots and the nature of your origin, then vast forces in the universe are unleashed.
That is psychogeography!
Alas during that ugly colonial war
You were besieged with fightings all around
The Brit and Boer their cannons smoked
Yours the portal through which I came
Ladysmith.
[Note: Driving along the N3 between Durban and Johannesburg, Home Farm is the farm on the South-West quadrant of the N3-R616 junction near Ladysmith, https://maps.google.co.za/maps?q=google+maps+28%C2%B0+34'+60S,+29%C2%B0+36'E]
©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za
