Makhanda forever! Grahamstown by any other name is just as charming

Arriving in Makhanda from Joburg by car warrants a sigh of relief. This is not because you have left the smog and the bustle of the city behind, but because navigating the potholed and waterlogged roads of the Eastern Cape is, truly, a death-defying experience.

Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown) is a sleepy university town most often characterised by its many churches, donkeys, pubs, and potholes. And while the name may have changed, the characterisation sticks.

Makhanda is a place where you'll be woken up at 6am most mornings by the sheer weight of silence pressing down on you from all sides (that, or the racket of a street brawl between a donkey and a hadedah).

It is a place where brushing your teeth or brewing a cup of coffee involves stepping outside, half-asleep and into the morning cold to retrieve water from a JoJo tank because even though the drought has let up and the dams have somewhat filled, most of the pumps are either broken or missing and nobody seems to know why, exactly.

Breakfast is rarely an issue, because even though the "city centre" is about the size of a Joburg parking lot, it contains around 10 different restaurants or cafes to choose from.

Worked through the day and forgot to buy groceries? No stress. The Pick n Pay, for reasons unknown, stays open until 11pm.

Looking for a place to grab dinner? Be sure to check out "Steak Evening at The Albany Club", as advertised on Facebook by the town's main private security company, Hi-Tec. And if you're in need of a drink, there is, unsurprisingly, no shortage of dive bars.

Still, there are many good things to do in Makhanda. A pub lunch at The Rat and Parrot, a hike up to the Toposcope, and a day spent lounging around in the botanical gardens all rank highly.

There is also Bathurst Street's Camera Obscura which, from a small turret at the top of an 1850s building, offers a 360° view of the town, but only if it's sunny out, of course.

And if you're the type who enjoys decaying dolls of the colonial variety, be sure to pop into the Observatory Museum on your way out.

A highlight of my trip was a visit to the Amazwi South African Museum of Literature. Not too much of a walk from the centre of town, but just far enough from it, the museum stands out like something of a cosmopolitan oasis in the town - "A very modern building for Grahamstown, but very nicely constructed," said one thoroughly impressed individual on TripAdvisor. "Unexpectedly good," said another.

Inside, you'll find well-researched literary gems from throughout the history of the country, including colonial writings by a Sir John Barrow, who was convinced he'd found proof of unicorns by way of a cave painting, and severely disgruntled letters from publishers to their writers.

There's also a handwritten letter from Bessie Head to a bearded stranger she once met, which includes the line: "PS: I was the one holding a baby." Trust a literary museum in Makhanda to have some of the more peculiar artefacts from our literary history.

On a particularly dreary weekend afternoon, my partner, two of our old journalism lecturers and I piled into a car and drove out to Kenton-on-Sea for lunch.

We ate on the wooden deck of a restaurant looking down the dunes and out towards the sea, happy to be in the sun and without a donkey in sight.

We asked our former lecturers whether, after so many years of living in Makhanda, they would ever consider leaving.

"Well, what we've discovered," came the upbeat response, "is that the key to living a happy life here is to leave as often as possible." 

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Makhanda is named for Makhanda kaNxele, a warrior who fought against the land dispossession of the Xhosa under colonialism in various battles, including one where he led an attack against the British garrison at Grahamstown in 1819. He was imprisoned on Robben Island and drowned while attempting to escape.