Forgotten Towns of the Karoo - a photojournalistic essay

Bitterstroom
Day 3: 18 December 2005 SUNDAY

Traffic had a new meaning in the Karoo, because on this tar road we encountered a donkey cart. Once again a friendly local would wave at us as he trotted with his two fat donkeys, while his passenger smiled as I snapped pictures of them. Their hats were the only protection they had against the sun, but it never seemed to bother them.

Opposite the Leeu-Gamka Community Hall in Bitterstroom a young boy, dressed in only a short, was running bare-feet down the road with a plastic bag full of lemons. When we asked him where he was going, I saw his feet covered in white dust he replied that he was on his way to deliver them to a friend. He was so eager to get to his friend, because he didn’t want to wait for us to take a photo. But he patiently waited for us and just as the camera snapped the photo, he turned around and ran down the street, only glancing back at us. That was our only encounter with a local of Bitterstroom, because the rest of the people were unseen and must have been relaxing inside their homes.

The streets were scattered with small character filled homes. They surely were some of the smallest we had seen, but each one had something unique and welcoming to them. Most of these homes probably only had two rooms at most, a living room, kitchen room and a bathroom, because these homes couldn’t possibly have space for anything else. The yards were quite big though, leaving enough room for further developments to the homes. Small shrubs of various sizes replaced the lacking trees we had seen in Loxton and most of these streets were so wide that six lanes would easily have fitted between the homes.

At first we came to this little development and thought that it was Leeu-Gamka, only to realize our mistake when we actually left the town and passed a small hill and came across the real Leeu-Gamka. What had misled us in the first place was the Leeu-Gamka Community Hall, which was built right on the main street in Bitterstroom for some or other odd reason. The fact that it had the name Leeu-Gamka on it, and the board Bitterstroom at the entrance was really confusing.

It took us approximately 10km from Bitterstroom to Leeu-Gamka.

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A Short History:
Bitterstroom had received their name because of its hydrogenous brack water. But please read the history of Leeu-Gamka for a further short history.

Additional Pictures: