Toorkuns

...in the beginning

The Fool, number 0 in the Tarot - the joker in the ordinary pack of cards - is about to start a journey.

The question is: will he learn anything from this trip?

If he learns something, he is not a fool.
If he does not learn, there is no point to the journey whatsoever.

As a child I was deeply saddened by the story of Paul Kruger's exile.
Many years later, as an adult, I was recuperating at a clinic in Switzerland. Deep soul searching for me: should I return to South Africa, which i had vowed never to do? Yes. No.

I went for a walk, and suddenly around the corner was Villa Kruger, where the old president had spent his final days.



I saw it then, so clearly. I still see it now. The view across the silent lake, the magnificent glaciers. So beautiful. So cold. It wasn't Africa with its rawness, its dazzling, oppressive heat, its veld, its teeming wildlife.

This, then, is the journey of Hennie, the fool: my toorkuns , my pilgrimage , my return to the beginning. Such a journey is arduous, you encounter demons, ghosts until finally, you lose all fear - because you return to what you have been running away from.

The road to Heaven passes through many Hells.



When I was a confused teenager, confused too about my language, Afrikaans + my people, the Afrikaners, I wrote to Alan Paton, asking whether the language was doomed. Because to me it was the language of oppression + bigotry + hatred. He replied - and used my letter to illustrate the point in his column in the Sunday Tribune. He wrote that there was a difference, that Afrikaans was able to express love + beauty. It has taken me decades to truly understand what he meant.

Toorkuns is my homecoming... to my language, to the time of innocence, before the war.

__________________________________________________________________

I dedicate the project to Paul Kruger, and to the men who were exiled to St. Helena, Argentina and Ceylon; to Sarah Baartman, to Miriam Makeba and Breyten Breytenbach. And also to Helen Martins www.owlhouse.co.za with special thanks to: Bheki Khambule Lalelani Mbhele Welcome Danca and to my fellow traveller, Rossetta Woolf www.azazel.com/woolf