1. Wedding in Langebaan

This excerpt comes from a memoir exploring marriage, family and the blending of cultures across continents. Set on South Africa’s West Coast, it captures a wedding shaped less by formality than by personality, humour and family dynamics.

The passage demonstrates my approach to memoir storytelling: grounding emotional moments in sensory detail, cultural texture and gentle observation, while allowing warmth and humour to carry the narrative without sentimentality.

Excerpt from an unpublished memoir

A few weeks after saying our vows in the Founder’s Garden in Athens, Georgia, we swapped magnolias for fynbos and gathered at the Langebaan coastal resort managed by my younger brother. This West Coast spot, all whitewashed walls, blue shutters, and winding cobbled lanes, looked more like a Greek fishing village than a South African seaside town. The small private harbour brimmed with yachts rocking gently in the water, the horizon blazing orange come sunset.

            Here, in this picture-postcard setting, we had one of the most special days of my life.

            On our wedding morning, the weather gods were smiling. Not a breath of the infamous Langebaan wind, just a cobalt-blue sky and sunlight bouncing off the sea. My heart was already full - for the first time in over five years, my whole family was together. My sage-but-slightly eccentric eldest brother, his wife and three girls had flown in from Australia. My gentle giant of a middle brother had trekked down from Joburg with his brood. And my youngest brother, a larger-than-life character with the kind of charm that could sell boerewors to a vegan, was playing host. Add uncles, aunts, cousins, a handful of old family friends, and a few of my besties, and we had a joyful crowd of just over thirty. Everyone knew everyone. Everyone belonged.

            My dress was nothing fancy, a bargain from a Chinese website, but with red shoes and a red sash, it felt like me. Michael and the men wore white linen shirts, khaki pants and Panama hats. My only nephew, affectionately called Boesman, looked far too handsome in his miniature version. My nieces, the flower girls, ditched their pink tutus within minutes, leaving only the swimsuits and Gina’s over-the-top fascinators made of feathers, ribbons, and beads, which she swore were essential.

            My uncle collected me in a golf cart, which promptly lost its brakes and nearly sent us somersaulting over a log. I arrived windswept, laughing, and more than a little exhilarated.

            My eldest brother walked me towards the rose-covered arch where the ceremony would take place. Four years my senior, he’d stepped into Dad’s shoes when we were still kids, whether we liked it or not. We’d given him so much uphill over the years, but he’d never stopped trying. His serious expression that morning, softened by the familiar one eyebrow raise, told me he understood exactly why I’d asked him to give me away.

            Then I heard it, the unmistakable sound of French horns. My old teacher and friends from my youth were playing Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, and my heart swelled. My youngest brother, despite all his connections, had struggled to find someone to marry us, as December is peak wedding season, and we hadn’t given him much notice. He was about to get ordained online when he found us a sweet, elderly Afrikaans dominee. The only problem: he wasn’t confident in English. We told him to mix the languages - Michael wouldn’t understand half of it anyway, but we’d translate.

            So the ceremony unfolded in that very South African way, where people slip between English and Afrikaans mid-sentence. Every few lines, the dominee would look skywards, sigh, and ask, ‘Hoe sê mens…?’ and someone in the crowd would shout back the English. When it came to the bit about giving your ‘troth’, he pronounced it ‘trough’. I repeated it exactly as he’d said, ignoring the laser-beam ‘don’t you dare’ look from my mother.

2. The Listening Room

 This passage is taken from a memoir chronicling my development as a classical musician and the formative moments that shaped my artistic identity. It centres on a quiet turning point – the first encounter with a sound that altered my sense of possibility.

The excerpt illustrates my interest in interior narrative: how ambition, longing and transformation often begin in subtle, almost private moments rather than dramatic events.

Excerpt from an unpublished memoir:

The wind battered the building, shrieking around its concrete corners like a storm trapped in a bottle. Even the windowless basement listening room in the university library groaned with each gust. On days like this, the best escape between practice sessions was to burrow into the sagging yellow couch, a steaming mug of rooibos warming my hands, and lose myself in old recordings.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard him. It was a dusty LP of the Staatskapelle Dresden performing Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 1 - the same piece I’d been struggling through for weeks. But the moment Peter Damm began to play, I knew I was hearing something entirely different. His tone was golden, effortless, like a voice singing from inside the horn. He didn’t just play the notes - he told a story. He pulled tension like thread, spun it into shape, and then let it dissolve. I sat motionless as the concerto swept me away, and by the time the final chord gave way to the low hiss of the run-out groove, my tea was cold, my muscles stiff, and something inside me had changed.

Who was this man? How could he make music do that? And where was Dresden?

The next day, I was at my horn lesson, still reeling. ‘What makes one musician better than another,’ I asked my professor, ‘when they’re playing the same notes? What makes Damm so special?’

He nodded slowly, smiling. ‘It’s all about phrasing - tension and release. Damm has that down. He sings with the instrument.’

I turned to the window, watching branches bend wildly in the wind beneath a brilliant South African sky. ‘I want to play like him,’ I whispered, not yet daring to believe it might be possible.

‘Have you thought about what you want to do when you finish here?’ asked my professor, thoughtfully. ‘You could audition to go and study with him. He is almost ready to retire, so is at the end of his playing career. But, he will carry on teaching - I have heard he takes a few students every year, many of them foreign.’

Study in Germany? Was that even possible? How would I pay for something like that? Would I even be good enough?

An image flashed before my mind of me standing next to Peter Damm in a lesson. Could I even dream of this? I stared out the window, the music still echoing in my mind. The idea felt absurd, impossible - and yet it tugged at something deep inside me.

‘Do you think I am good enough to get a spot?’

‘Well, you won’t know if you don’t try,’ he said, giving me that quiet, knowing look - the kind professors give when they’ve just placed a mountain in front of you, and are waiting to see if you’ll climb it.

3. Betty’s Sea Vista Township Tour

 This excerpt forms part of a published blog piece documenting a guided township walk in Sea Vista, St Francis Bay. Written from the perspective of a local resident encountering a familiar place anew, the piece blends cultural observation with personal reflection. It demonstrates my ability to write respectfully about community, place and social context, while maintaining a reflective narrative voice that invites empathy rather than judgement.

Excerpt from a published blog article: https://dunedaisies.co.za/bettys-sea-vista-township-tour/

Fondly known as “China” by many of its inhabitants, the Sea Vista Township is a vibrant residential area located next to the industrial area of St Francis Bay. It is home to an eclectic mix of people, speaking anything from Afrikaans to Chichewa mixed in with a bit of English. The atmosphere feels alive and pulsating with strains of music coming from all corners. Dogs are everywhere, looking for scraps or a sunny spot to nap and exist alongside people going about their daily business. On the weekends, the streets are busy and noisy, especially around the taverns. Sea Vista residents live amongst each other, not behind doors and fences. After work or on weekends, people bring their chairs outside and kuier with their neighbours, everybody knows everyone else’s business! The smell of braai meat wafts through the air, and there’s always chatter and music.

I hardly knew anything about Sea Vista until recently (even though I live a few kilometres from it). Nothing in my daily life required me to go beyond Tarragona Road. Yet, I was often struck by how much activity and celebration there seemed to be on the other side of the road after hours. I imagine it would be hard to feel lonely in a place like this. When the opportunity to take a township tour with a local guide came about, I seized it – eager to understand more about what life is like for others in my community.

Betty Anoster is our tour guide (and possibly one of the most captivating and resilient people I have ever met). Her hugely successful tours were curated for foreign guests at the Cape St Francis Resort who wanted to learn more about local culture. The tour is a leisurely stroll through Sea Vista guided by Betty, and depending on how long your shebeen stop is, it takes about 2 hours.

4. A Hike Towards History – Baviaanskloof Camino

This excerpt is taken from a feature travel article written for Skyways Magazine, documenting a multi-day hike through the Baviaanskloof region. The piece explores physical endurance alongside historical reflection and emotional insight. It demonstrates my ability to shape experiential travel writing into narrative nonfiction, blending landscape, group dynamics and philosophical reflection into a cohesive story.

Excerpt from a feature article published in Skyways Magazine (Issue: January 2024)

We tossed and turned throughout the night, cocooned in sleeping bags, covered head to toe in thermals and woollen beanies. It was freezing in the isolated, rustic Enkraal. The incessant sound of the percussive rain on the tin roof was deafening, interrupted only by our hiking companions’ rhythmic snores.

The rivers were in spate after weeks of welcome rain. Was the wet hike we had just endured, and this seemingly endless nocturnal downpour, a prelude to impassable rivers and enforced lock-in?

The last two days had been challenging. We had hiked over fifty kilometres, conquered at least four mountains and experienced every season nature could summon. Our small group of women, ranging in age from late forties to mid-seventies, had begun to question their motivation for signing up, wondering if they were truly up for the challenge. We had all asked our guide, more than once, whether we were really going over that distant mountain peak. Her slow, patient nod and encouraging smile were often met with incredulous eyes.

We reminisce about our earlier adventures and voice regret at having to re-enter our ‘normal’ lives as we walk towards our final night’s accommodation. What had begun as a purely physical experience had evolved into something far more complex, primal and philosophical.

The Baviaans Camino walked the paths of our forefathers, and in experiencing a taste of their lives, their landscape, hopes and dreams, we too were touched by the ancient wisdom of this wilderness and its inhabitants. We walk now with their spirit within us.