In South Africa we call a small pickup a “bakkie”. It is an Afrikaans word that actually means a small bowl. You’ll give milk to a kitten or a puppy in a “bakkie”. How exactly it came to be used for this type of vehicle I don’t know. In our country with its 11 official languages, we borrow and mingle. Some words we don’t translate. We just use them “voetstoots”. As is. So, whether you’re English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, you’ll call any small pickup more or less up to a one tunner a bakkie. Thereafter it is a truck or a lorry. Were you to emigrate to another country you might find fairly similar vehicles, but you would miss using the word. There’s just nothing like a bakkie. And among bakkies there are Bakkies. Legends. You can get them only second hand. Or steal them. They’ve earned their reputation through years of use and reliability. Driving one of them you get used to people walking around them, admiring them, kicking one of the tyres saying: “They don’t make them like...
The Restory is a Retreat Centre nestled against Tafelkop, a singular mountain head near Wakkerstroom, South Africa. Here we live a simple life as contemplatives. It is a place of re-connection: with ourselves, people, Nature, Silence and Creativity. Our retreats are aimed at this. Our conversations, writing and art centre around the univocity of life. We need a place that reminds us that we are all one. The Restory hopes to be such a place and space.