My Mecca

Far, far south – and far away from everywhere – this ‘Mecca’ was built by Helen Martins in the tiny village of Nieu Bethesda in the dusty Karoo.

It has little to do with Makkah, the holiest city in Islam, a place she’d never visited. But it has everything to do with my own ‘Mecca’ which isn’t a place at all...

In 1945, ‘Miss Helen’ began building her ‘Mecca’, transforming her home using cement and wire, pieces of glass and plastic, and finely crushed glass which she used to coat the brightly painted walls and ceilings. Later, with the help of assistants, she built over 300 sculptures in her garden of owls and camels, and other animals and figures, almost all facing east.

I can only imagine how laughably crude and strange – and maybe even a little nightmarish – her fantastic creations must have seemed to the conservative Christian villagers, inspired as the sculptures and murals were by the Bible but also by the poetry of Omar Khayyam and the work of William Blake.

Under Apartheid, her collaboration and friendship with her assistants, especially Koos Malgas, a farm labourer from the so-called ‘coloured’ community, only added to her own Afrikaner community’s disapproval and mistrust.

Although the reclusive ‘Miss Helen’ had little to do with the villagers, once a year she would invite them into her home, every mural and all the mirrors and brightly coloured windows illuminated by dozens of lanterns and candles.

However, in 1976, at the age of 78 she took her life. No one knows for sure why she did it. Her home, known as ‘The Owl House’, fell into disrepair but in 1996 became a museum and national monument, and is now visited by the curious and appreciative from around the world.

As a teen, I was deeply moved by Athol Fugard’s play The Road to Mecca which is based on the life of Helen Martins and had been drawn to ‘The Owl House’. But, finally getting to visit years later as a student teacher with a group of teens, it wasn’t so much the place that inspired me after all – it was the imagination, determination and hope of the untrained artist behind it.

And, of course, the hours and hours of creative activity which transformed her home and garden into this unique ‘Mecca’...

You can read more about Helen Martins and 'The Owl House' on Wikipedia. And about The Road to Mecca at http://litmed.med.nyu.edu. And if you'd like to find about more about Nieu Bethesda: http://www.nieu-bethesda.com.

Camera obscura

While in Grahamstown, I took some of my family to the Observatory Museum. Its Victorian camera obscura is the only one of its type in the southern hemisphere and one of only two in the world (the other being in Edinburgh).

A camera obscura is an optical device which predates the camera. The name originates in Latin and refers to a darkened room: camera means “vaulted chamber or room” and obscura means “dark”.

The museum was originally a nineteenth century jeweller’s shop and family home. The original owner and designer of this unusual building, Henry Carter Galpin, was a successful watchmaker and jeweller who constructed the camera obscura in 1882. He was interested in natural history, music, mechanics, astronomy and optics. The museum also includes a Meridian Room where Galpin could ascertain the precise time of local noon (14 minutes behind South African standard time) and a Telescope Room which contains the telescope which was originally installed in the rooftop observatory.

We climbed up a long and very narrow spiral staircase in the highest tower to reach the camera obscura. It works through a system of lenses and a mirror in a revolving turret in its roof and projects a panorama of the city onto a concave viewing surface in the darkened observation room beneath.

It’s fascinating and our guide was knowledgeable and friendly (though the building itself looks in need of maintenance).

This photograph of the image in the camera obscura is not as clear as the image itself. And had it been a sunnier day the image would have been even sharper.

Once locals would set their watches by the time on the clock tower but the clock is no longer working and these days each clock face seems to show a different time..!

You can find out more about the Observatory Museum at http://www.grahamstown.co.za and on Wikipedia.

Owlish

In many parts of the world, owls have been – and may still be – associated with all kinds of dark and dreadful fears – of death, spirits both protective and sinister, witches and wizards, thunder and lightning, shipwreck and robbery, drunkenness, blindness, idiocy, whooping-cough, hair loss..! There’re just too many to mention.

But owls have also symbolised wisdom and knowledge – which is perhaps why a group of owls is called a parliament (– though I’m not convinced that all parliamentarians are wise and knowledgeable..!).

In South Africa too owls have been feared.

I grew up with an African scops owl in our garden. It used to perch in a big tree outside my brother’s window and we’d sometimes sit and watch it before it got dark. Scops owls are small, agile and solitary, and only have a single type of call – kind of a ‘prrrp’ every five seconds or so. It’s almost monotonous and not at all urgent, but it became such a comforting sound to fall asleep to. You can listen to it here: http://www.owlpages.com/sounds/Otus-senegalensis-1.mp3

Scops owls use their sharp beaks and powerful claws to kill their prey (mainly mice and rats) which they tear and swallow, regurgitating the indigestible parts (like bones and fur) afterwards. We used to find these pellets beneath the tree – they were quite dry and odourless, the tiny bones intact and easily identified.


These owls I sketched were, unfortunately, on display in the Albany Museum in Grahamstown. I tried to capture something of their fascination and beauty anyway.

A barn owl

A slightly squint owl

A startled owl?

And for everything about owls: http://www.owlpages.com (And of course Wikipedia!)