Dance for the Patch Man

If people remember you for one wise thing you said sometime in the course of your life, your job on Earth is done. If the children of a small town in the Karoo celebrate your existence in song and dance, you’ve left behind the kind of legacy that corporate kings, famous writers and rock stars can only dream of.

So this is what brings us here to the North End of Prince Albert, late one afternoon. We’ve been given slightly dodgy directions to a house where the local Vastrappers are practising. The kind of directions that normally get GPS-free types like us hopelessly lost. But this time we make like homing pigeons, by simply following the streams of young men, women and children mostly dressed in gaudy patchwork costumes, converging on one address.

We meet up with the dynamic Sara van Rooi, songwriter, dance leader