“You must be the family’s clown,” Tannie Marietjie’s mother said. I rolled my eyes.

“Him?” (Personally, I think that Dad and I are funnier than him.)

She ignored my comment and kept on talking, telling us about the Koster family—and, yes, we’re staying near Koster. Tannie Marietjie was a Koster, and the town was established by her great-grandfather. On the wall, there were pictures of just about everyone in the Koster family, including a wedding picture of Oom Dennis and Tannie Marietjie.

“It was pure agony,” she was saying. Mrs. Koster was referring to her husband taking her on a drive in his bakkie on a new road on their property. The agony-causer pointed out this road from the top of a hill after he had driven Tannie Marietjie, Ethan, Mom, Dad, and myself up it, followed by Tannie Marietjie’s brother’s dog, two of Mr. and Mrs. Koster’s three dogs (one was named Bessie), and Griet, Tannie Marietjie’s four-year-old Saint Bernard-great Dane.

On our way down, we saw some unnamed antelope bounding away, and Bessie and Griet pursued them. Bessie eventually joined the other two dogs in following the bakkie, but Griet was a long time in coming.

And then we saw her, bounding down the hill, tongue out, feet pounding the dirt, panting. She jumped into the cows’ water trough but didn’t jump into the concrete dam because it was too high.

When we returned to Mr. and Mrs. Koster’s house, she showed us a bird book and fed us ice cream.

Ciao!