Hehe I love it. The Women’s Memorial in Bloem is an enormous phallic symbol :)
Actually there are a fair number of places of interest in Bloem, most having to do with the boer wars, but still plenty to see if you are looking for something to do on a Sunday morning. Most of the memorials etc were erected between 1920 and 1950 so unsurprisingly there is a lot of very strong anti-english sentiment. For instance the women’s memorial is dedicated to the thousands of women and children that died in the English concentration camps. All over the war museum there are statues of the boers in various stages of defeat and oppression. The best of these depicts a man on horse back galloping away from a woman holding a baby with both of the horse’s front hooves in the air. I’m not very big on the whole art thing, but this really moved me. What is quite amusing is that the english equivalent of all of these can be found in kimberley, which is now as afrikaans as you get.
Towards the end of the morning we happened upon the cleansing memorial, which signifies the transition from the old South Africa to the new. It basically consists of a bunch of plaques on the ground going from war, slavery etc to peace, cleansing etc, only in three languages and a fountain where water runs over a colourful shelf. It is a very nice concept and all that but it really lost something for me when I noticed the following on the plaque above the fountain:
“Symbolism:
1: rainbow – the rainbow symbolises the different people of our land.
2: water – the water …”
I kid you not. It really cheapened the whole scene. I also have a feeling that this is something they will look back on in 10 years and go eee, damn art was ugly back then.
In other news my mouse squeaks… it’s very embarrassing.