History of an early chemist.
Now this is one of those tales you will only hear from someone who was lucky enough to have grown up and lived in the Tankwa many, many moons ago. Someone who has seen it with their own eyes and been on the receiving end of some of the remedies dispensed from there. The Tankwa can best be described as quirky today, lots of people who live here or visit regularly do so because they don’t gel well with normal society, a kind of living on the fringe group. Not necessarily a bad thing because this is where you find some amazing folks, amongst the different.
As a rule, when traveling in the Tankwa, I deflate my vehicle’s tyres to prevent punctures and most times I stop at the fork in the road where the R355 and R356 split. It was during one of these tyre deflation stops that my now late, mother-in-law asked if I knew the history of the cave next to the road. She had lived in the Tankwa since 1934, only moving to Ceres many years later and she was an absolute walking encyclopaedia when it came to the Tankwa.
So here is the challenge, cast your minds back and try and imagine what the Tankwa might have been like in the 40’s and 50’s. No techie gadgets, no internet, no mobile phones or any phones for that matter, less vehicles and loads less people. It would have been a seriously remote area and only the real hardcore folks would live there. There was no Tankwa Padstal, no Tankwa National Park and no Gannaga Lodge.
What to do if you suddenly fell ill?
Easy one, right? Visit a pharmacy or doctor and get some quick fix medication. Now imagine this happening back in the 40’s and 50’s Tankwa and repeat that question. What would you do if you fell ill or Heaven forbid get bitten or stung by one of the Tankwa’s less friendly inhabitants?
You would have two options. The one was not even a remote possibility for most of the people living in the Tankwa at the time, drive to the nearest town, either Ceres or Calvinia to visit a Doctor or hospital. This option was not really practical as very few people had cars, many still used donkey carts and bicycles to get around. The other, more accessible solution was to use traditional herbal remedies. That would be assuming that you had the correct herbs, that you knew what they looked like and where to find them. Finally, if you are anything like me, you would have to know how to use these herbs without consulting Google. If all these things came together and you got hold of the required herbs, I’m pretty sure those herbs didn’t come with a foldout leaflet explaining the usage, dosage or side-effects.
Luckily there was a solution, a chemist of sorts with a cure for all the ailments the inhabitants of the Tankwa could suffer. He came in the form of the man in the cave. Most visitors to the Tankwa have driven right past his former home/dispensary. Today sadly, his cave has been badly vandalised by clowns who feel that leaving their name on rocks makes sense in some parallel universe, where I would like to condemn them to. This is however where most folks in the Tankwa came to find herbs or herbal remedies back in the 40’s and 50’s.
You would simply tell this “Bush Chemist” what ailed you and he would he supply the correct herbs or would provide a recipe for a herbal brew (with ingredients if you did not have) to cure your problem. According to my source he was very good at giving the correct herbal meds and advice. What made this cave dweller even more remarkable is that he took no cash for his remedies, instead he traded for food, tobacco, coffee and alcohol from travellers passing by on their bicycles and donkey carts. The herbs were his way of sustaining himself in the Tankwa, which I imagine must have been a lot more interesting back then. So, I guess the Tankwa had the first drive-thru pharmacy of sorts, way back before everything else could be found at a drive-thru…
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