Hamburg will always be our home

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When Dr Carol Hofmeyr moved to the coastal Eastern Cape village of Hamburg aged 50, she could not foresee that what was to be a sunny weekend getaway spot would become the birthplace of the world-renowned Keiskamma Art Project.

An “undercover” medical doctor who wanted to shift her focus to art, Hofmeyr, 75, also wanted to empower women in her new community by offering them a way to boost their self-esteem and self-purpose by creating art.

And, when the Aids epidemic hit Hamburg, Hofmeyr dusted off her stethoscope and helped save lives.

The reluctant doctor and enthusiastic artist now divides her time between Hamburg where the art project still flourishes, and Fish Hoek, where she recently opened her home to art enthusiasts.

Hofmeyr was part of the inaugural Fish Hoek and Clovelly Openstudios walk in which artists in the area mounted home exhibitions of their work and threw open their doors to visitors.

The Daily Dispatch asked her:

Q: How did it come about that you left Gauteng for Hamburg?

A: We moved to Hamburg almost accidentally. My husband Justus is an obstetrician who was working at the University of the Witwatersrand but wanted a change and wanted to work in under-resourced hospitals for his research on how to make childbirth better in poorer communities.

He was appointed to Frere/Cecilia Makiwane and we had heard of Hamburg from friends who had grown up in the area before it was part of Ciskei.

We drove down the then very bad road in the dark one night, stayed at the also very bad hotel and bought a house the next day.

We intended the house to be a weekend retreat and to live in East London during the week.

It started like that, but I then met some of the women in the community, especially 70-year-old Susan Paliso who was supposed to be our housekeeper and who actually came with the house and gave us no choice. She did little work except bake her own bread in my oven and give me a piece occasionally! 

But she enchanted me with her intelligence, humour and forcefulness.

I had decided long before that I was no longer a doctor and actually told no-one, but somehow Susan got me visiting her sick friends and buying medication for them. In this way I got insight and access to the homes and lives in the village of Hamburg.

Coming from Johannesburg, I had — at 50 years old — no real direct experience of life in rural SA for the majority of people. I was appalled, humbled, shocked and dismayed.

Q: What inspired the Keiskamma Art Project studio?

A: With my city mentality, I tried to report the removal and sale of the trees of the coastal forest only to see that this was a desperate measure to keep families fed.

I watched the perlemoen poaching and saw how women risked their lives at night just to get money for food and school uniforms.

It was a revelation to me as a white South African and I was compelled to do something.

 I have depression and after my two sons were born did not manage to work in any meaningful way until I went to art school and found a way of expressing myself and gaining confidence and self-esteem by seeing I could make things that reflected my inner world and that there was actually a heart and mind within my confused being.

I had worked in the Paper Prayers Project in Johannesburg trying to teach people about HIV prevention and also trying to offer some hope and agency through making and selling small artworks.

All these experiences worked together to help me see the way that making anything by hand can raise self-esteem and give hope and a sense of purpose.

I thought I could teach the women how to make art and thus improve their sense of self and make them see how valuable they were.

We started slowly and used our own money — that is the money Justus earned — to renovate a derelict public works property and open a studio.

Q: At first the women used plastic bags littering the beach to crochet bags and placemats. But then you came up with the idea of embroidery.

A: The environment and human suffering have always been my two concerns and Hamburg at that time had plastic bags blowing everywhere and the beach was littered with plastic debris.

But we could not use the old plastic bags and had to bring in new ones. Also we had no outside market to sell the products. However, some women are still making these and selling them locally in the village.

Then I thought of embroidery which the women could do at home and talk while doing it.

I asked Jan Chalmers and Jacky Jezewsky and they came, often twice a year, for 10 years and taught new stitches. It is due to them that the standard of Keiskamma embroidery is so high.

I realised that the real gift I had was in my connections to the worlds of art and medicine and that people all over were keen to help and teach and share and get to know people across the chasm of material and cultural differences.

I saw that women held the key to the community as men were often absent or demoralised and that empowering women could change families.

Q: You were initially reluctant to once again practice medicine. Why did this change?

A: The burden of illness was overwhelming to me in this village and I saw that often it was impossible for people to access hospital treatment because they had no money for the taxi.

In those days the clinic was often poorly staffed and poorly stocked with some remarkable exceptions.

 This was before we knew what was coming with the HIV epidemic.

My husband suggested I apply to work in the clinic.

When I appeared at the clinic everyone knew me as an interfering white woman and no-one believed I was a doctor! So they did not give me a desk or a place to work until they called someone to confirm I was actually a medical doctor.

I am a general practitioner and did not manage to practice after my children were born, retrospectively due to post-partum depression and pathological anxiety.

In Hamburg I was part of a community and could not stay in this most beautiful, beloved place, without doing everything I was capable of to help deal with the many problems facing the rest of the community.

I came to know the people intimately and they became my people and this forced me back into medicine.

Soon after starting work, the HIV epidemic became evident and then it was a crisis that no-one could turn their back on.

People I knew well had adult children coming home from work in the cities and dying in secret at home.

In those days we used to look for small things to be thankful for.

We actually made the altarpiece with the idea of comforting those who were going to die or who had lost loved ones.

Q: How did you manage to open a much-needed hospice in Hamburg during the height of the epidemic?

Justus met someone who had funding from Pepfar (US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) for ARVS. We were able to join as the required rural arm. We were able to open a hospice and save many hundreds of lives.

This seemed, at the time, just like our almost arbitrary decision — to buy a house in Hamburg, something that happened by chance. However, looking back I can see a pattern and a path not chosen by me, but in fact just opening up to me as I stepped forward.

Q: What is your take on the wonderful strides the project has taken and the brilliant art the women have created?

A: I never imagined the success of the art project or that we would be the second site to offer ARVS in the Eastern Cape after Lusikisiki.

It all seemed to just happen when I followed my instincts and communicated with my friends and made connections. The project is successful because many people offered their skills and time and money to teach, sell and promote the work.

I am constantly amazed at the success of the Keiskamma Art Project and could never have imagined this when we moved to Hamburg in 2000. The people of Hamburg gave me a place to become who I am in a way I could not have expected.

Q: Back to the present, how did you come to exhibit at the Fish Hoek and Clovelly Openstudios? Do you spend a lot of time in your Fish Hoek home now?

A: My husband’s family have had a holiday home in Fish Hoek for 40 years, so we have come often but more and more since I retired from Keiskamma and Justus works online.

My son Graeme is a doctor who works at Isilemela Hospital in the Eastern Cape. When their daughter needed to go to school, his wife Ingrid and our granddaughter moved to live with us in Fish Hoek, so we are there more than we used to be. Fish Hoek has become a second home and a place I feel I belong.

I have artist friends there who were involved at the inception of Fish Hoek and Clovelly Openstudios who invited me to join.

Q: How did your art journey begin?

After my two sons were born I was unable to work effectively as a doctor. I did not know I had post-partum depression.

I took up working with clay in the 1980s alone on our plot outside Johannesburg and, perhaps as a symptom of my mental state, made only large vultures!

I gradually moved into art classes and then enrolled at the Wits Technikon (now University of Johannesburg) for a fine arts degree. I grew to love printmaking and majored in it and completed my master’s in printmaking just before we moved to the Eastern Cape in 2000.

In art I found a way of expressing — mainly for myself — ideas, feelings and thoughts I have which I only partially grasp, and which I clarify to myself as I work.

Q: You work in so many mediums. Can you say why and what they are and what makes you move from one to the other? Do you also embroider? And what are some of the themes you explore?

A: I originally came to art though ceramics, but at art school grew to love printmaking, which I used very unconventionally, often with collage.

For my master’s exhibition, which I worked on in the Nineties, I tried to work out the role of white settlers in the new SA. I started by looking at all the crosses the Portuguese had placed on the coast of Africa, particularly Southern Africa, as evidence of power, not of crucifixion.

I used embroidery then as part of my work.

My themes have always been death and resurrection or restoration and the destruction of the natural world which I see as a crucifixion. In my best moments I believe this crucifixion will be followed by a restoration or resurrection of all living things.

I always work with narrative or stories in my artwork, so my major work for my master’s was an effort to work out for myself my role in SA as a descendant of settlers.

I came to see it as one of learning from the people who were colonised and giving what I had to pay for what we have taken.

A pivotal experience for me was driving in Namibia to see and photograph the Portuguese cross at Luderitz.

On my drive though the desert I came across a Nama man walking where there were no other humans for miles. I stopped to give him a lift and he got in the car and said “die Here is Groot” [God is great].

His name was Karl. He had taken his wife and ill child to a bus in the nearest town to get to a hospital and had no money left to get home and he was walking more than 100km.

He thanked God for a lift from me in my car with food and air conditioning and he didn’t blame anyone for our disparate situations.

I think he was one of the people who allowed me to see how we colonists brought Christianity in power and conquest and how indigenous people have interpreted it as it should be — a religion of humility and wonder — and teach it back to us.  

Q: You lived in Botswana for a few years. How did this come about and can you mention the art you were inspired to do there?

A: We moved to Botswana in January 2020 and lived there for three years. 

Justus got a job assisting the inception of the new programme to allow medical graduates from the University of Botswana Medical school to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Botswana instead of coming to SA.

We did not expect the Covid epidemic and that we would be unable to return for a year!

During this time, suddenly away from everyone I knew and loved and from my work in Keiskamma, I took a class online in oil painting with my long-time friend and teacher Greg Kerr.

I loved the wildness of Botswana and tried to capture some of this in painting. I also longed for Fish Hoek and Hamburg and used painting to feel close to them again. 

Q: What inspires you currently to create?

A: I think now I create for the same reason I made those inelegant, rough vultures all those years ago.

It is to try to understand myself and the world and my horror at what happens and, like Karl the Namibian man, express wonder at the beauty that suddenly shows itself to me in the midst of the sorrow and cruelty.

For the past two years, I have been appalled by Gaza and what Israel has done in retribution.

I have embroidered over my simple Last Supper embroidery that I made when we first moved to Hamburg when the Eastern Cape beauty overwhelmed me. Now I have added all my doubts and sadness and horror and tried to will myself to believe that all will be restored, both humanity and all living things.

Q: What was it like to open your home and show your work last week? You had posted on social media that you were nervous about exposing your obsessions.

A: It was very frightening to show my work and I nearly pulled out!

I have not had a personal exhibition since my master’s exhibition in 1999 in Groot Marico.

My obsessions are the role of Christianity in both causing harm and good, suffering, death and resurrection, and the destruction of the environment and also my wonder at its beauty.

In the week before the Openstudios weekend the group of artists who were part of the event got to know each other better.

We saw each other’s work and felt each other’s fears, insecurities and goodness.

I think what amazed and comforted me was to see into the homes I had passed by so often and also to see how remarkable human nature is.

All these people are working for good and making things with faith in order to make the world better. I suddenly felt I belonged to their group just as I had felt I belonged in Hamburg.

I was amazed at the interest and kindness of the visitors.

I was encouraged that they took time to understand my work and the work of the other artists.

Many of the visitors were local and I had a sense of the kindness and goodness of people in this area.

It was an eye-opening experience for me.

Q: What ties you to Hamburg now? Are you still involved with the Keiskamma Art Project and what does the area mean to you? Are you still involved with helping the community?

A: Hamburg will always be our home. It is the place that gave my life meaning and it is where I have the closest relationships. Also I love my garden and the estuary and the forest and the birds.

I am still on the board of the Keiskamma Art Project and when I am home I work to help the young people set up a library in the Keiskamma buildings and give access to books and reading.

I also advise both the health and art programmes if they ask for help.

Q: Can you imagine yourself ever retiring from art and other projects and simply relaxing on the porch?

A: Yes all the time! But I never seem to be able to do it. It is my goal just to be able to watch and appreciate and wonder at the world from my porch or garden.