I’m just back in Cape Town from a four-day working trip to the Tankwa Karoo to help build Subterrafuge. Arriving around midnight Wednesday night, driving through mud puddles from the couple of rainy days, pitching my tent in the rocky soil, it didn’t register yet but I was coming home. The last few years my home has been everywhere and nowhere. In the same way I came home driving my van onto the Monegros desert for the first time in 2012, Tankwa is one of those special places that instantly feel like home.
Arriving in what will become Tankwa Town even before DPW rock up is such a privilege. Being able to see it grow organically from the few people at our Subterrafuge camp to the thousands that will be for the burn. It doesn’t feel like work, but there is still lot to do and less than 4 weeks to do it. Those cones won’t build themselves!
Being back in Cape Town for a couple of days I already miss Tankwa. Waking up in my little tent in the desert before sunrise, hearing the jackals howl, cooking water for coffee on a wood fire. Getting to work, cutting wood into smaller pieces for cladding of the cones, painting them, putting them on the structure using a kick-ass nail gun, standing on 4 meter scaffolding above the desert. Life doesn’t get better than that.
So I’m off to Tankwa again now, back home. I will be back in Cape Town (my home for the last 6 months) a month and a half from now, only for a couple of weeks before I’m flying back to Brussels (my first home). See you at the Burn or somewhere along the way!