Bokoni

The old stone circles in Mpumalanga are similar to the ones I explored around Johannesburg thirty years ago. Interesting. Not ancient. Stone houses keep the day’s heat and radiate it through the homestead during the night. Making them comfortable spaces. During the heat of the day, cool shelter is also a vital component of a good life in Africa. Some selection has been made of the vegetation around the homestead: the thorns around the rooms were really substantial and of many different types; some that I’ve never seen before. So it seems to me that they use living plants as well as the barriers they built from stone to protect their livestock and themselves. People built these structures in the last five hundred years.