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Catering
Dune fare
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Community Feast
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Traditional Breakfast
Home Stay Accommodation
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Melkhoutfontein has been a fishing village for as long as anyone can
remember. You’ll find it to the left of Stilbaai in the area they call Eden.
It’s tucked behind a bank of dunes because traditionally it was thought to
be unlucky to live in sight of the sea when your survival depended on it.
Down on the
shore, stone fish traps date back 3 000 years, but whole they might have
worked for our Khoi architects, there’ve been a few changes in the fishing
industry and life in general since then. For one thing, man can increasingly
no longer live by fish alone.
So over the
centuries, life just got tougher and tougher for Melkhoutfontein’s fisher
folk. In 1992, the Human Sciences Research Council earmarked them as one of
the poorest communities in South Africa, reflecting all the social ills that
go hand in hand with poverty.
But fate
step in when Moses Kleinhans, an ailing veteran from the village, crossed
paths with tourism strategist Anthea Rossouw, award -winning founder of the
Dreamcatcher tourism initiative. He said to her, “Please help me to help my
people. The fishing is almost dead, our community is dying. “Twice Moses had
nearly drowned at sea, and he felt he’d been spared by God to meet and work
with Anthea. “There is so much to be done. I will be gone soon, so you must
be our hope, our dreamcatcher.”
Moses didn’t
live to see it, but seven years later Melkhoutfontein received an award for
development and tourism from the Nelson Mandela Masakhane initiative.
One of the
first tourism project to be established in the village was an indigenous
botanical garden, named Soete Inval. Apart from being a focal point and a
draw card, it gave the town a facelift, raised appreciation for the natural
environment, and created work.
Then to
accommodate the most vulnerable members of the town (the aged and the
disabled) a satellite branch of a care centre in Stilbaai was built
overlooking the garden. It was named Soete Rus. This was followed by Sonskyn,
a badly needed crčche to cater for the children of the women who were going
out to work. The beginnings of a thriving town centre were now in place,
with young and old on either side of a flourishing garden.
Today all
needed facilities are in place and Melkhoutfontein is a proud blueprint for
other communities in South Africa. |
