Chronicles of Narnia Guest House
Book extract
I read this with gut-wrenching fear. I had heard talk of a fire near Elandskraal and a gale force wind prediction, but how was this... possible
Devastating Fires
A tragedy no one could imagine
A wonderful family holiday in Canada. Four messages on our Estate WhatsApp group back home:
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Will the fire jump the river?
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No, we're safe.
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I can see flames.
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We're surrounded—get out!
I read this with gut-wrenching fear. I had heard talk of a fire near Elandskraal and a gale force wind prediction, but how was this possible – a fire jumped the Knysna River? Fifteen minutes before, my house-sitter had sent me a pic from our pool saying,
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Don't worry, no fire here.
The next message was,
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We're evacuating. Fire at the dam.
"It was like armageddon." — Stella Sohn. In June 2017, while the Sohns were on a family RV trip in Canada, wildfires tore through Knysna. "We lost everything we owned, including our cars. Our house sitters thankfully got the staff and dogs off the property and to safety. We returned two days later to utter devastation and nowhere to live."
Canada is around nine hours behind South Africa. We started calling anyone we could think of to help our staff, house-sitters and dogs with somewhere to stay. Our friends, the Emmanuel's, sent them to their son's house in Cove Street, central Knysna.
Safe! At the South end of town. An hour later, they were told to leave as fire was threatening them there. How was that possible? Lower town? Middle of suburbia! Along with hundreds of other vehicles, they headed for Thesen Islands and spent the night in Shane's bakkie – surrounded by an impossibly burning town, mayhem and terror.
We tried to fly home the next day. Flights were full so we had two days with family who had joined us. Sightseeing in Vancouver while our lives back home fell apart, along with our beautiful town. I don't remember what we did really. Two sleepless nights. A nightmare trip home.
Along the way, news from friends that our Narnia Guest House, our home of 30 years, had burnt to the ground and that a child's body had been found on our driveway. Why? How? We slowly pieced it together – Enala, our gardener Timothy's sister, had run up our hill to find him with her little girl, Catherine. Tim told them not to go back, that fire was coming, but she had received a call from her husband, Blessing, and ran, with him begging her not to as he himself was plucked from certain death by our neighbour – smoke and flames roaring towards them and the house.
We won't ever know how it happened, but they probably got disorientated in the thick smoke and ran in opposite directions.
Enala was found by a security officer in the morning, wandering at the bottom of the hill, near death. Two days in ICU, she was transferred to Tygerberg Burns Unit, passing away the next day.
That such horror and tragedy occurred at beautiful Narnia is inconceivable. That we weren't there to help – we have to live with. But also, the knowledge that we wouldn't have been able to do more than they did.
We got home and joined Tim, Flata and little Lucy and our house-sitter at a friend's holiday house on Leisure Isle where we tried to restore normality, arranging for the family to get back to Malawi for the funerals.
Devastated Timothy lost his sister and his niece. We cooked, washed, settled our dogs, took walks, tried to ignore the smell of smoke hanging over the whole town, and the sickening sound of the choppers, dropping water on fire – still smouldering everywhere.
“It was as though two army tanks and ten machine-gunners were told to do as much damage as they could. Devastated roof sheeting everywhere, rubble, blackened cars.”
Driving past countless gutted homes and guest houses, we visited Narnia. A scene so horrific it defies description. It was as though two army tanks and ten machine-gunners were told to do as much damage as they could. Devastated roof sheeting everywhere, rubble, blackened cars (all 3 of them).
Bizarrely, chimneys standing with fire grates in them and the odd wall, melted glass. Not a blade of anything alive—not a leaf, not a tree, not one flower remained of my once award-winning garden.
Difficult to digest, standing there outside our beloved home. 30 years of our lives. I took our boys up those stairs as babies, my mother's wedding dress (and mine), my grandfather's war medals, my husband's father's priceless settler armoire, our sons' artwork, my grandmother's silver crocheted tablecloth, photo albums, DVD's of our past fun – all gone. Our son's treasured bonsai collection lay shattered under their collapsed gazebo. And our housekeeper, Mavis, lost Narnia – her second home for 25 years.
Aching hearts, tears for us, tears for our town, and all the families weeping like us. A tragedy beyond our wildest imaginations. No choice but to move on, clean-up, rebuild – let beauty rise from the ashes. We have planted a special tree at the driveway for Enala and Catherine.
Narnia Guest House, for direct booking specials visit www.narnia.co.za or call Stella on 083 325 2581.
