The clicks are scatter. The notebook glosses are scatter. The chipped enamel mug is scatter.
All traces of a people who did not build monuments but who have not disappeared.
This is where the telling closes. The school continues. The clicks continue.
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Petrus sat in the silence after the lesson. His hands rested on his thighs. His face was turned toward the yard. He did not speak. He did not move.
The silence was not absence. It was the space where the lesson still breathed.
The benches hold the heat long after the learners leave. The wood is scarred with initials. 2014. 2016. 2019. The eraser has worn a hollow in the margin where a thumb pressed and rubbed and pressed again.
Someone wrote ǁgarib five times down the edge of the page. Each attempt closer.
The final piece in the Aitsama series is live.
After the Lesson. A last word on Petrus Simboya and the garage in Concordia where the clicks are taught.
I do not speak Nama. I am learning to listen.
The full piece is live now on Notes from the Dust. A young girl learned to say it on an autumn Tuesday. Petrus Simboya waited. She tried three times.
The third attempt came out clean.
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'Orange River' honours the Dutch House of Orange. It says nothing about the water.
ǁgarib describes what the river is. Not who claimed it.
The click is the land speaking. Remove it and the word becomes administrative. A label. A line on a map.
To say it you must first make the lateral click. ǁ. Tongue against the roof of your mouth. Pull the sides inward. Air rushes along your molars.
It sounds like a goat's hoof lifting from damp earth after the first winter rain.
This week I am launching a new bi weekly series. Lost Syntax. Words from the Northern Cape that resist translation.
The first word is ǁgarib. The Nama name for the Great River. The one the maps call the Orange.
The colonisers struggled with the clicks. They could not pronounce ǁgarib. The sound sat in their mouths like a stone.
But the word is still here. This week: Lost Syntax.
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New series: Lost Syntax.
A bi-weekly log on language, translation, and the words that resist meaning.
First entry: ǁgarib. The Great River. The name the colonisers could not pronounce.
Starting Thursday.
New gallery piece: ǁgarib: On hearing the Great River
I can make the click. ǁ. It comes out clean. But I cannot speak Nama. The rest is silence.
This piece is about a blind teacher, a young girl, and one word that will not die.
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New workshop log: What the Ethics Tree Taught Me.
'I wrote twelve because it sounded better than 'a young girl.' That is not a lie. It is a guess. A guess has no place in a scene that claims to be true.'
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New workshop log: The AitsamaClassroom
I sat in a converted garage in Concordia. A blind teacher. A young girl learning to speak a language her great-grandparents were punished for speaking.
The lens paragraph is not a confession. It is a contract.
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I sat in a converted garage . A blind teacher. A young girl learning to speak a language her great-grandparents were punished for speaking. The click is ancient. It is the sound of the land before it had a name in any other language. This Thursday's log: the insider's lens.
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The most interesting thing in the room is usually ignored.
The dust motes, the clock ticking, the way someone holds their pen.
That's often where the truth hides.
Not in the argument, but in the silence between words.
The trick is to learn to observe it.
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This week's drill: the Insider's Lens.
I am from Bergsig. That gives me access. It does not give me answers.
The lens paragraph is where I name what I do not know. Where I acknowledge what I owe.
Thursday's log: how to be present without becoming the story.
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New gallery piece: The Dust on His Boots.
He walks to the koppie every afternoon.
His wife is scattered there.
His boots are caked with dust from Nababeep.
The same dust my grandfather wore home
I watched his thumb move for weeks before I saw what was at his feet.
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Look at a scene you’ve written. Could it happen anywhere? If so, deepen the setting until it feels essential—so rooted it couldn’t exist anywhere else. #SundayReflection #writingcommunity #writersofbluesky
A close-up photograph of worn brown leather work boots covered in reddish-orange dust. The boots are laced with orange cord and sit on dry, dusty ground with a blurred mining landscape in the background. Overlaid on the image is the text: 'His boots are caked with dust the colour of copper. He never looks down at what they carry.' Ben Marvan.
I watched an old man for weeks. Missed the dust on his boots until day 20. Same copper dust my grandfather wore from Nababeep. A 'loaded detail' carrying history without words. What I almost missed, and what I found. New gallery piece: The Dust on His Boots. Drops at 18:00 SAST.
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Voice is rhythm. Read your draft aloud.
If you stumble on a sentence, the rhythm is broken.
Fix the music before you fix the grammar.
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'The hook does not deliver the meaning. It opens a door.'
That is what I learned this week. New log: three hooks for the old man on the stoep, and why the dust almost got left behind.
New workshop log: The Dust I Almost Missed.
I passed the old man for months before I saw his boots. I was looking for meaning when I should have been looking at what was actually there.
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“I don’t want to do something already being done. I want it to be interesting and new!” The overarching idea was to photograph subjects inspired by the philosophy of Yin and Yang.
open.substack.com/pub/susanneh...
Setting is not just where your story happens. It is how it feels to be there. The temperature, the light, the smell, the sound. Bring the reader into the room. Let them stand where you stood, breathe what you breathed. That is the work.
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"Along the path, many of the plants were carefully marked, most of them named in Afrikaans, carrying a kind of rhythm on the tongue. I have heard these names before, in a song, or perhaps in Afrikaans poetry."
open.substack.com/pub/maritabe...
A wide-angle, low-angle shot of a rocky South African koppie at sunrise. In the foreground, a weathered leather journal and a tan wide-brimmed hat rest on a large, sunlit boulder. The rugged slope is scattered with white quartz, hardy brown shrubs, and clusters of small, delicate white wildflowers that catch the morning light. In the background, the rolling, arid hills of the Karoo stretch toward a soft, hazy horizon under a pale morning sky. The scene is quiet and contemplative, emphasizing the beauty of slow observation.
Three weeks watching one slope of the koppie.
First the rocks. Then the flowers. Then the ants carrying something too small to name. Today I saw a bird’s shadow before the bird.
The drills teach you to see what is there. Staying teaches you to see what was there a moment before.
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Yes. Trust the truth to do the work the pretty words were trying to do.
Today I cut a sentence that sounded good but was not earned. The words were fine. The rhythm was fine. But the truth was not there. The reader will never see it. They will only feel that the piece breathes better.
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A top-down, close-up photograph of six small, weathered stones arranged in a deliberate but organic 'scatter' on a textured, neutral surface. The lighting is soft, highlighting the unique grains, cracks, and earthy tones of each pebble. One stone sits slightly apart from the main cluster, symbolizing a detail left behind to keep a narrative focused
I’ve been thinking about the 'sixth stone', the detail that didn't make the cut to keep the narrative focused.
In today’s Gallery piece, I explore the ethics of what we leave behind in our reporting.
substack.com/@benmarvan1/...
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'Meaning is not only in what is built. It is in what is left behind.'
'The Sixth Stone' is now out.
A study in Northern Cape history, the 'scatter' of the Nama, and the philosophy of the unfinished.
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