Scraps of Hope — Pre cycle-tour Free State visit

Scraps of Hope

You may recall lasts weeks post about Ruan Smit — the enter­pris­ing young cyc­list who sets off on his "Explore South Africa Cycle Tour" on the 13^th February. (see the art­icle here — Collecting people's stor­ies — cyc­ling 9000km in 70 days). Ruan will be send­ing us weekly snip­pets and stor­ies abut his exper­i­ences on the road dur­ing his tour to share with our read­ers — and here is the first. Says Ruan — "I'm spend­ing some time in the Free State, doing some train­ing and try­ing to get to some other towns — and wrote this art­icle for you ..."

"I’m in Ficksburg today, and I could tell you how beau­ti­ful the morn­ings are, that it’s at the foot of the Drakensberg, that before the rain falls there’s usu­ally a sand­storm that pre­cedes it. I could tell you that it’s the cherry cap­ital of South Africa and that the sun shines a blis­ter­ing silence dur­ing the day. But all these things you will prob­ably find if you Google "Ficksburg" ...

I rather want to tell you about two ladies that inspire this little Free State dorpie. Two ladies that lost everything a few years ago… well Sandra kept the dog…

I haven’t even settled into my room when Sandra starts bom­bard­ing me with their story. It’s a story about love, com­mit­ment, per­sever­ance and scrap ideas. I’m not even going to bother telling you how they ended up hav­ing noth­ing because this is not what their story is about. Their story is about gain­ing more than they’ve ever had. More than they’ve ever dreamed was pos­sible. And it all star­ted with scrap metal. Yes, old pots, pans, wire, frames, any­thing you can buy from a scrap yard.

As I enter the gate, Sandra wel­comes me with a pink umbrella that I’m sure she’s stolen from her daugh­ter. She takes me to my room and explains that this room was built from stone that a friend gave her when she had the idea of build­ing a guest house. The room is per­fectly odd, but beau­ti­ful. She starts telling me that when she had to fur­nish the room she had no money, so she star­ted pick­ing up ran­dom pieces of scrap metal from scrap yards to turn into fur­niture. This inspired a concept for which people drive hours to get a glimpse of.

As she anim­atedly tells me her story she invites me for din­ner where I would meet her Ansie. Ansie is her part­ner in crime, her busi­ness part­ner. The one that has more energy than most teenagers.

Ansie and Sandra are two middle aged ladies that find cre­ativ­ity in everything. When they were given the chal­lenge they rose to the occa­sion and pro­duced an idea so unique you would never ima­gine steal­ing it. They make art from scrap. What?! That’s the reac­tion from many a vis­itor as the get a first glimpse of their ‘gallery’.

They now employ ten artists that work full time on the crazy ideas they have. But when it all star­ted these two ladies only had Paul. Together they took a weld­ing course at the com­munity centre and with broken Sotho built a skill that has now become a little empire of ran­dom scrap metal.

What they do is, take scrap metal from any­where they can find it and lit­er­ally trans­form it into some­thing beau­ti­ful. They even have bakkies com­ing from Lesotho selling them rus­ted pots and pans for money to feed the chil­dren. Since they’ve star­ted, Ansie has become a motiv­a­tional speaker, spread­ing her pos­it­ive energy through­out South Africa. She speaks about how any­thing can become some­thing beau­ti­ful, no mat­ter how rus­ted it is, inspir­ing. These two ladies take the time to listen to people. In their garden there is an art­work that reads “Where there is cof­fee, there is com­pany.” And they are always ready to sit down and have coffee.

They’ve put life back into this town. When people drive here to see their exhibit they help this little town to become what it is sup­posed to be. A town full of life, a town full of extraordin­ary people.

When I ask them if I could take a pic­ture the chat­ter stops instant­an­eously. “Not like this!” Before my eyes they trans­form into the cari­ca­tures their art­work por­trays. With some red lip­stick and two hats made from pots they are all of a sud­den ‘present­able’. They pout, sit upright and face the cam­era. They’ve obvi­ously done this before…

If you ever pass this town hid­den in the up hills of the Eastern Free State stop over at their place. Or bet­ter, if you have noth­ing to do over a week­end take the trip to this little dorpie. Have lunch with them and meet their art­work. You’ll be pleas­antly surprised".

Follow Ruan's exper­i­ences with us here: Explore South Africa Cycle Tour.
Follow Ruan on his Facebook Page or to read more about his trip see Explore SA Cycle Tour.

Useful Ficksburg Links:
Ficksburg Attractions
Ficksburg Cherry Festival
Ficksburg Accommodation
Free State Accommodation