| Lied vir BEGINNER-STUDENTE van Afrikaans [boodskap #8508] |
Wo, 12 Februarie 1997 00:00 |
Izak Bouwer
Boodskappe: 464
Geregistreer: Januarie 1996
Karma: 0
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Senior Lid |
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SO RY DIE TREIN
So ry die trein, so ry die trein,
die Kimberley se trein.
So ry die trein, so ry die trein,
die Kimberley se trein.
Hoor daar hoe stoom hy,
stoom hy, stoom hy,
opdraand en afdraand,
Kimberley se trein.
So : in this way, so
ry: ride, go
trein : train
hoor : hear
stoom : steam
opdraand : uphill
afdraand : downhill
hill : heuwel
Kimberley is the site of the biggest manmade hole
in the world. In the 1860's they found very large
diamonds there, like the 83 carat "Star of South
Africa." Cecil John Rhodes, a sickly young man
from England, became the wealthiest and most
powerful man in Africa because of these diamonds.
Barney Barnato, a boy from a London slum, became
a mining magnate and a multi-millionaire. One of
the farms, on which diamonds were found, was owned
by a farmet called De Beer. Rhodes bought that farm,
and called the firm he created "De Beers." This is still
one of the biggest players in the diamond industry in
the world. Today the firm is run by the Oppenheimers.
There are no high hills in the Kimberley region.
In fact, once the wife of a train driver told me that
her husband told her that on the stretch between De
Aar and Kimberley they put the train on automatic
pilot and go to sleep. It therefore always intrigued me
that this song should talk exclusively about the train
going uphill and downhill. My own private theory
is that the song originated with the population around
Cape Town, probably in the last century when the
diamond rush was on. In order to get, by train, from
Cape Town to Kimberley, you had to go up and down
quite steep mountains to get out of the Western Cape.
(That was before they made some tunnels through the
mountains.) But after that everything is very flat for
hundreds of miles, going through the semi-desert areas
of the Great Karoo and the northern Cape.
Of course, there are not only diamonds at Kimberley.
The Gariep (or Orange) River ate through the diamond-
bearing cone of an ancient volcano millions of years ago,
and washed some of these diamonds down stream. There
were therefore alluvial diamonds to be found along the
banks of the Orange river. At the mouth of the Orange
River they found large quantities of diamonds just buried
in the sand, ready to be picked up by the basketful. These
days they have to dig in the sand to get at them. They also
dredge the seabed at the mouth of the river to recover the
diamonds. This operation is in the hands of De Beers.
Gloudina Bouwer
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