People are living there – a story of resilience

Writer Elaine Davie

Before the holiday makers and the tourists, before the seaside mansions, the art galleries and the restaurants, there were the fisher folk of Hermanus. Without them the town would not have existed. Yet in the history of the region, their rich and poignant story has largely been ignored.

Not only this, but in many ways they have been treated with utmost disrespect. It is a tribute to their strong sense of community, their ability to see the humour in the every day and their survival instinct that they are still around to tell their story and to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the establishment of Mount Pleasant this year.

Fortunately, there are an ever-dwindling number of elderly people still in the community who have long memories. How else would we know the names of some of their family members and neighbours – oom Potlood, Willie Wind, Ou Wiel, ‘Kiss me round the corner’, or Lewis Fick, a fisherman, who used to go to work in a suit, change into working clothes when he got to his boat and on his return, shower and dress himself in his suit again before walking home?

And who now, outside of the community, remembers their hero, District Nurse, Sister Chrissie Dreyer, the only source of primary health care in the community? She lived in a house behind her small clinic and provided a wide range of medical services, including family planning and marriage counselling, as well as officiating at all the home-deliveries in the community. Over the period of her career in Mount Pleasant, she delivered 5 580 babies, arriving for a confinement on her bicycle, with her nurse’s bag on the carrier over the back wheel.

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