Bedford is an Eastern Cape village in South Africa. There are about 10 000 residents, including the farmers in the broader district. Only 600 of those residents are White. The rest are isiXhosa and Coloured. And most Coloureds are from the Khoi and San Tribes, the original inhabitants of the southern tip of Africa.

We have running water twice or three times a week. The people who can afford it install rain-harvesting tanks.

Currently, we have power blackouts for about 7 hours out of 24. But that’s the same in the rest of the country.

As small as our village is, we have our own hospital. It’s very quiet here, except on Mondays when the dentist is open for extractions. Otherwise, the hospital is mainly for babies being born and old people dying. I live around the corner from the hospital so I see the patients pass by, on foot or in the one ambulance that services the district.

There are snobs and shop owners and addicts and poor people and farmers and farm workers. But the races live together in relative harmony.

Best of all, no one in our village is a blogger. So I can tell you the delicious tales without getting into trouble.