Place of perseverance
Eksteenfontein is not on any major route. You might not even spot it on a map. It’s a place hidden deep in the Richtersveld, clasped in a calloused grip of mountains.
Even clouds battle to reach it. It has been six years since the last decent rains, says Selma Klim, standing in front of Eksteenfontein’s 100 pale-blue postboxes. “But we do at least get our post once every three weeks.”
At Elbry Strauss’s Welkom-winkel you’ll find fresh bread, vegetables and fruit every Tuesday morning – on Mondays he rattles along a corrugated road to Springbok and back in his bakkie to buy supplies.
Elbry wasn’t always in retail. Like
