A trip to Three Rondavels, a striking trio of South African mountaintops that resembles traditional circular dwellings called rondavels, emphasized local ties between nature and design, and became towering Wakandan skyscrapers topped with thatched rondavel roofs.
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Overnight guests emerge from mosquito-netted beds and make their way from the porches of their rondavels to the breakfast area.
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Ndzou has thatched rondavels, tents, a three-bedroom house, restaurant and bar.
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The flat-topped peak adjacent to the rondavels is Mapjaneng, "the chief", who is remembered for opposing invading Swazis in a memorable battle. The three rondavels are named for three of his more troublesome wives – Magabolle, Mogoladikwe and Maseroto. Behind the rondavels the distant high plateau of Mariepskop may be visible. Beside the dam, the isolated Thabaneng hill is known as the "sundial" or "mountain with a shadow that moves".
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The three rondavels The Three Rondavels are three round, grass-covered mountain tops with somewhat pointed peaks. They resemble the traditional round or oval rondavels or African homesteads quite closely, which are made with local materials. Sometimes they are also called the Three Sisters, though this may confuse them with a similar threesome visible from the N1 road in the Northern Cape, very far to the south. The names of the peaks commemorate a 19th century chief, Maripi, and three of his wives.
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They opened five shops and started a hospital. Single African men were at first housed in mud brick rondavels with thatched roofs. After 1929 they were moved to baked brick houses with corrugated iron roofs and concrete floors, supposedly mosquito-proof, while the rondavels were assigned to African married couples. The company's compound manager and the black mine police had more authority than the government.
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Nearby natural attractions are Blyde River Canyon, the Three Rondavels, God's Window and Bourke's Luck Potholes; the Tzaneen fruit farms and Hoedspruit game farms can all be visited within a day.
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The park like campus is dominated by red-brick buildings with green corrugated iron roofing. The oldest buildings on the campus are a set of thatched rondavels in a typical African style.
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It is said that the position of its shadow indicates the time of day. On a clear day the lookout point provides extensive views. From here one looks over the canyon to the Three Rondavels on the other side, which is flanked on various sides by promontories of the northern Drakensberg range. The formation of the attractive sedimentary formations are explained geologically as the slow erosion of underlying soft stone, leaving the exposed the more resistant quartzite and shale rondavels.
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Paths lead to the different habitats and to a central rest area. Furthermore, the garden includes a small museum and a guest house consisting of several rondavels. The garden is home to 116 species of trees and 110 species of herbs.
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Near Berg-en-Dal and the Malelane gate is the small Malelane satellite camp. Featuring 15 tent sites, 4 four-bed rondavels and 1 three-bed rondavel, Malelane only provides one activity of game drives. Check-in is handled through Malelane Gate.
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There were three teachers. When Sibeko started the school did not have its own building, but a school made of two rondavels was built with money raised in the village while he was there, and the buildings were still standing in 1990, though no longer used as a classroom.
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This was viewed by the council as an improvement on the original wattle and daub huts. In the same year 116 houses were occupied by 503 people in Ginsberg. Sixty-two more rondavels were built in Ginsberg in 1924. There were three buildings in the township which served as both school and church.
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Near Skukuza's staff village is the N'waswitshaka research camp, which provides accommodation for visiting researchers and their guests. The facilities are comparable to the rondavels, chalets and campsites in the main camp, but are entirely self-serve. Additional resources such as an office facility with internet access and game guards are available for researchers if required.
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A road was also built from Crocodile Bridge to Skukuza, passing by what is now Lower Sabie. In 1931, eight rondavels were built at Crocodile Bridge, marking the first time it was used as both a gate to the park and a rest camp. In 1935, several Knapp-huts were erected. These were square buildings with corrugated steel roof and cement blocks.
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This deserted base of a former labour recruiter became Fraser's ranger post. It consisted of five rondavels on the bank of the Shongololo stream, not far from the present Mopani rest camp. Fraser was a poor administrator however, considering office work 'undignified', and was besides a poor manager of his native staff. He also developed poor relations with government officials of the district.
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Orchards has several heritage sites. The Kraal is a house in Pine Street, now a museum and guest house, built in 1907 by Hermann Kallenbach and has two rondavels attached to it. It was inhabited by Kallenbach's friend Mohandas Gandhi who lived there between 1908-1909. Other heritage buildings include the Pine Street Shul built in 1959 with stone friezes that depict the 12 Israeli tribes and designed by Eduardo Villa.
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Rondavels can be found in the countries of Southern Africa, including: South Africa, Lesotho (where the hut is also known as a mokhoro), Swaziland, Botswana, and others. In Réunion they exist only in public places, for picnics for example. In different areas, there are small local variations in wall height, roof pitch and general finish. Some people elaborately carve, paint, or decorate the outside wall that has been finished off with dung.
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Kwezana is a village near Alice in the Tyume River valley. It is the birthplace of Archibald 'Archie' Mncedisi Sibeko, and he gives an account of life in the village in the 1930s in his book. At that time there were about 18 homesteads in the village, each consisting of a number of rondavels with walls made of wood and mud and roofs with a wooden frame, thatched with grass. One would be the kitchen and others used for sleeping.
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These animals can be seen standing around town as the local farmers arrive in the innumerable taxis to sell their wares on the curbside. With the influx of tourism dollars, the typical traditional rondavels have been replaced by square, cinderblock homes roofed with tin and occasionally tiles. Mobile phone service in Maun is excellent out to about , depending on weather. Maun is also becoming a regional transshipment hub for materials and tradespeople who service both the local camps and safari centres and the burgeoning mineral exploration camps in northwestern Botswana.
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Perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Lepaqoa Valley, the visitor centre has a picnic site and interpretative trail to the top of the Lepaqoa Falls, as well as guides and horses for hire. There is also a two- to three-day hike along the alpine plateau to Ts'ehlanyane National Park to the north. Camping is possible throughout the reserve, and there are also two stone-and-thatch rondavels close to the falls. Bokong is a picturesque hiker-friendly reserve at altitudes of 2800 to 3200 meters.
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Elephant statue outside the Letaba Elephant Hall Letaba rest camp overlooks a bend in the Letaba River, very close to the geographic centre of the park. Its accommodations include 86 rondavels, 20 furnished tents, 10 six-bed cottages, 5 three-bed huts with communal ablutions, 60 tent or caravan sites, and two large guest houses, the Melville and the Fish Eagle. The Fish Eagle guest house also contains a private bird hide. Letaba also hosts the Elephant Hall, a small museum dedicated to elephants, especially the Magnificent Seven.
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The Blyde River flat gecko, discovered in 1991, is as yet only known from the cliff face of one of the three rondavels, while the Mariepskop flat gecko was discovered on nearby Mariepskop in 1982. The Abel Erasmus flat gecko is known to occur at Bourke's Luck inside the reserve. Exotic fish like smallmouth bass, brown and rainbow trout occur in the river, which have reduced the range of the local Treur river barb to upper catchments of the Blyde River system. Thanks to reintroductions after its rediscovery in the 1970s, it now flourishes here.
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Gandhi, Sonia Schlesin (Gandhi's secretary), Hermann Kallenbach Gandhi spent 21 years in South Africa, from 1893 until 1914, although he made visits to India and the UK during that time. It is said that Gandhi first learnt about racial discrimination when he was arrested at Pietermaritzburg railway station for travelling in a whites only wagon.Gandhi History in South Africa, accessed 18 June 2013 In 1904, Gandhi met Hermann Kallenbach, a German-Jewish architect who had arrived in the country in 1896. In 1907, Kallenbach designed a house that was based on the shape of two local huts (rondavels)"Hermann Kallenbach", Artefacts.co.
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Towards the end of 1941, when many young mothers went to work during the war effort, Redhill opened a Nursery School, which was soon to become the first independent nursery school that was up to government standards in those days. As a result of financial difficulties, Catherine Hill sought out more affordable premises for the school, finally settling on a group of rondavels in Morningside. To raise funds, Redhill School was registered as a company on 6 April 1946, and it was at this time that many parents agreed to serve on the board of directors.
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The principals (wooden poles running radially out from the apex of the roof to the top of the rondavel's wall) are fully supported by the circular purlins: First, the principals do not sag in the middle, because sagging only puts the purlins near the middle of the principals under compression. Second, the principals do not splay at the bottom (push the top of the walls over to the outside) because splaying only puts the purlins near the bottom of the principals under tension. Thus it is possible to build a large rondavel without internal bracing for the roof. Traditional African rondavels range in size depending on the availability of building and construction materials.
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Maseru at night—view to the south. The city center is to the right Basotho Hat Shop Most of the traditional thatched-roof mud-brick houses, called rondavels, have been replaced with modern housing and office blocks which have a tint of traditional architecture. There have recently been some new buildings in the center of the city, particularly the building across LNDC center which now houses Good times cafe, a Vodacom shop, offices and the new building of the Ministry of Health which was completed in late 2007. Buildings destroyed in the 1998 political uprising have been rebuilt and have shops like Fruits and Veg City, Woolworths and Mr Price to name a few.
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Older locations depicted in the film, such as Warrior Falls, the City of the Dead, and the Hall of Kings, were juxtaposed with the more modern Afro- punk style of the Golden City, the capital. Rondavels were incorporated into the tops of Wakanda's skyscrapers, inspired by the appearance of mountains at Blyde River Canyon in South Africa. Beachler created different sigils and architecture for each of the Wakandan tribes, with the Border Tribe inspired by Lesotho, the Merchant Tribe having a sigil based on Nigerian writing, and the Golden Tribe using a sun symbol found throughout Africa. Gorilla City, home to the Jabari Tribe, was originally set in a rain forest, but Coogler suggested that it be found up a mountain in snow.
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The advent of the phantom Tokoloshe came about through indigenous Southern African folklore to explain why people inexplicably died while sleeping in their rondavels at night. Traditionally, these people slept on the floor on grass mats encircling a wood fire that kept them warm during sub-freezing cold winter nights on the highveld in the rarefied air. They never realized the fire was depleting the oxygen levels, leaving noxious carbon monoxide, which is heavier than pure air and sinks to the bottom. Eventually it was realized that anyone who happened to be sleeping in an elevated position escaped the deadly curse of Tokoloshe, which was described as a short man about hip high who randomly stole one's life in the night unless they were lifted to the height of their bed.
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She walked or travelled on horseback to reach the afflicted in the remote mountain villages such as Leroto, Borutsa, Ketane, Monyameng, Qhobeng, Maphutseng, and Phamong. She would typically spend a week in each village, sleeping on the floor of caregivers’ or patients’ rondavels and cottages. During this time she became convinced that properly supported community based efforts would be successful to care for the PLWHA; to wash their wounds, feed them, and provide education and emotional support to them and their families. Sister Juliana, through her visits and support, became a role model to the volunteer caregivers in providing hope and dignity to those patients who were shunned by their family and friends and were left feeling shamed, neglected, and alone. During this time (2002-2004), a young Peace Corps Volunteer from the United States of America, Lewis “Weej” Mudge, was serving in Mohale's Hoek and joined Sister Juliana's efforts to transform the vision of well-trained home based caregivers into a reality.
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