As Getaway and ISUZU’s Ikhaya Lekhaya campaign draws to a close, we take a look back at the journeys we made.
Over the past two months, we’ve been sharing stories, films and snippets from three incredible journeys that we took with three very bold South Africans. Each trip was wildly different, as were the people we travelled with, but there was one thing that tied everything together: home.
For Getaway and ISUZU’s Ikhaya Lekhaya campaign we asked three creative South Africans – musical director Charl-Johan Lingenfelder, investigative journalist Anneliese Burgess and stand-up comedian Noko Moswete – to take us back to the place where they grew up, the place they once called, and perhaps still is, home.
What a journey it’s been! From Cape Town to Villiersdorp, East London to Indwe, and Pretoria to Tibani – and back – we drove ISUZU D-MAXs along back roads and highways, dirt trails, farm tracks and rocky river beds to make our way to the place where our stars grew up. Along the way there was a lot of laughter (and coffee), turning heads (the D-MAXs are striking), music, beautiful moments and deep conversations about what “home” really means. And here, another common denominator: home – it’s complicated.
“The word ‘home’ definitely brings up a lot of emotions,” Charl-Johan Lingenfelder told us when we travelled to Villiersdorp, where he lived as a child. “I think that goes for everybody – because the word ‘home’ means where you are from, and where you belong. I grew up in small, sheltered Villiersdorp during the Seventies and Eighties and it was fantastic – but at the same time, it was awful. How do you make sense of that? I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure that out. How can something that was so amazing and so wonderful also have been so damaging at the same time?”
With Anneliese Burgess, we drove to her family farm near Indwe in the Eastern Cape. “I know that this town is no longer my home – but of course, there is a sense of belonging,” she said. “My roots are here, and I cannot escape that – the happiness, the pain, the everything. We are such complex tapestries and our roots contribute to this; the colours are all messy and sometimes the ink flows wrong and it unravels in places. But still it’s a tapestry – and it is who you are.”
Comedian Noko Moswete was contemplative when we visited her family home in Tibani, in Limpopo. “It’s such a privilege to come back here, to the place I’ve always called home,” Noko admitted. “Not many people are able to do that, and so many don’t have these deep roots; they have no community. I consider it a privilege to have people beyond the yard of my parents who love me, and I really appreciate it.”
Thank you for taking these journeys with us. If you’ve missed any of the films in the series, you can find them here.
