Map cards for Africa by Ilze Brüggemann (Naledi, 2024)
Title: Map cards for Africa
Author: Ilze Brüggemann
Publisher: Naledi (2024)
ISBN: 9781991256621
What a delightful, colourful little (just 80 pages) book! Surprising, too – surprisingly entertaining – and definitely informative as well. The reader might wonder what a map card is, seeing that many of us are not even familiar with postcards these days and, as the author states, our postal service is almost as dated as cards and stamps as communication modes in South Africa and Namibia. But she does not dally on the negative; the tone of the book is very upbeat, positively optimistic as well as visually pleasing.
Content, contextualisation and text come to mind when reading this book. The text seems fractured, and there is a bit of jumping around; this interrupts flow, and the reader has to concentrate on following the “where” and “what”, to make sense of the cryptic way in which the content is presented, and thus to contextualise the ensemble of pictures, maps and narrative in totality.
Map cards for Africa is basically built on three narrative levels: firstly, the story of Ilze Brüggemann’s reconstruction of a postcard collection, which belonged to her grandmother with the same name; secondly, the clarification of terminology regarding postcards, stamps and maps; and thirdly, a lesson in history and geography, mostly in the South African context.
The reader learns more about the postal service, for instance:
To find the origin of postal delivery in South Africa, you need to find Muizenberg on a map of the Western Cape. Muizenberg is a beach town and is considered the surfing spot in modern-day Cape Town. Between 1803 and 1805, this was where conventional post was delivered. Dragoons, or mounted infantrymen, delivered mail by horseback from the Castle in Cape Town to Muizenberg daily. The South African Post Office (SAPO) attempted to depict this on the set of stamps issued on 8 October 1993. The 45c stamp shows the postal riders, whereas the 65c stamp depicts a post wagon. (11)
A picture of such a rider, some of the mentioned stamps, and a map indicating the stated route can be seen on page 10.
Information on famous, or once famous, characters is provided, from the Great Dane called Just Nuisance (a fleet mascot) to Nadine Gordimer (Nobel prize author). There is also information on historic buildings, fauna and flora, such as the king protea (Protea cynaroides), with interesting facts: “[A] protea symbolises change and transformation across cultures.” Pictures and comments accompany commemorative stamps.
The author relates her experiences, which succeeds in offering a personal touch, albeit with a clear pedagogical slant:
While I was working on postcards of different countries, I realised that Westernisation is removing much of what we know as our own culture. (4) … We travelled to Namibia quite a few times and stayed with my grandparents in the coastal town of Swakopmund (in Rhode Allee). (69) … Butterflies and butterfly conservation is something that has had my heart for many years. (46) … As far as I am concerned, any game drive is for photographers who shoot with cameras, rather than bullets. (41)
Informative this book is definitely – terminology like “deltiology”, “maximaphily”, “se-tenant” as well as “hinged stamp” and “coil stamp” may be new to readers. I was an amateur stamp collector back in the day, and only now do I learn the names of objects and processes I was ignorant of, even though I was involved with them for years.
Speaking of words, the fact that “apartheid” is the first on the list (in the glossary at the back), indicates that this book is not intended for South Africans only. For the seniors of society, this book will bring back loads of nostalgia, and as for the rest, a glimpse of an era of quaint methods and manners they will never know. I found this book to be highly illuminating, shining a sharp light on many subjects and leaving me feeling all the better for reading it.
Lees ook:
Tinnitus: my near north (on The near north by Ivan Vladislavic)
Moederland: Nine daughters of South Africa by Cato Pedder: a book review