The Klein Karoo is an emotive place. It conjures up images of open space, mountains, huge blue skies, a wooden house on a dam, Bible pages blowing in the wind.

A circus elephant walking through the empty landscape is a constant companion after seeing the movie Paljas made here in 1997.

My husband grew up in Oudtshoorn. Visits here have always been overlayed with the weight of a fractious relationship with the town, its rigid ideologies and to the open dry landscape, its sharp plants. It is also a place of secrets, undisclosed events, some small, some as large and as seeming surreal as the elephant. One constantly questions what one can, and can’t, share about personal histories, family stories, daunted by their contentious nature as seen through the lens of this country’s difficult past.