Ghosts in Hofmeyr!

I travelled to Hofmeyr on 11th September on a systems review visit. Armed with the assessment tool I had developed for this purpose, I arrived in Hofmeyr 'town' just before 5 o'clock in the evening. The main street, like many streets in South Africa, was called Vortrekker Street, was already deserted by the time I rolled into town, save for a few people sitting on the only pavement in town. Hofmeyr is a one street rural out post deep in the Karoos. While the Vortrekker street is tarred, the other streets, well about four in total, are all dusty streets. I soon learned the reason the Vortrekker street is tarred. It is because it a thorough fare that connects Bugersdorp with Cradock and is used by those 18 wheeler trucks carrying livestock, mostly sheep. This fact was rudely brought to my attention by the incessant noise these trucks made at night as they ferried their traumatised cargo and I made vain attempts at sleeping!


I checked in at Kariboos Lodge where I found the affable manager, Lousie, waiting for me. Kariboos Lodge is an old establishment constructed in the 1800s. Apparently, I was the only guest that night meaning I had the whole lodge to my self. Louise took me on a conducted tour of the lodge. The bar was decorated with some memorabia dating back to the mid 1800s when Hofmeyr was founded by the first Boer settlers who where livestock farmers. Among the memorabia stuck to walls of the lodge bar where a second world war Boer Soldier uniform, complete with a rifle, boots and bullet belt. Louise then took me to the restaurant where there was an old piano, some early famed pictures of Hofmeyr and the first telephone switchboard used in in Hofmeyr in the 1800s. Finally, she took me to the passage leading to guest rooms and showed me more framed pictures of early settlers. In two such framed pictures, there were two black people among the whites. Louise told me that it is believed that those two blacks in the pictures were ghosts as no blacks were allowed to be photographed with whites in the mid 1800s.


Louise took me back to the lounge and showed me a door connecting the lounge to the restaurant. She, nonchalantly, informs me that one old lady told her that she believed there was a ghost in the restaurant because every time she came with her dog, the dog would bark non stop and refuse to go through the door to the restaurant. Louise finally announced that she does not live at the lodge and it was time for her to go home. I went back to my room, did not switch off my side lamp and slept with one eye open!