Dance Like a Voortrekker!

One of our favorite Afrikaans words is "voortrekker," pronounced fuurrrtrrrekkerrr, where rrr means you roll the r's. Yes, that's a lot of r-rolling, which is why it's one of our favorite words. Voortrekker literally means fore-trekker, or one who is trekking ahead, also known as a pioneer. They are the Dutch/Afrikaans-speaking Boers (farmers) who were forced out of the Cape provinces in the mid-1800's by the British and moved up to Pretoria, Free State, and Natal having to fight Nedebele and Zulus along the way (and later the British again). This migration is called the Great Trek, and was led by a guy named Andries Pretorius, after whom Pretoria is named (at least, until the name changes--more on that later).

Anyway, Voortrekkers are big, white people who have a particular way of dancing which is not dissimilar to a Texas Two-Step, but with straighter arms and more upper-body movement. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the Afrikaners call it "langarm" (long-arm) or "sokkie" (socks). We stumbled upon this my first night in South Africa when we noticed a place called Presley's on our way to our Pretoria guest house. Though tired from the long-haul flights, I also had some adrenaline from the excitement of finally having arrived, so we decided to stop for a beer or two. We walked in and, wow!, an enormous dance floor filled with enormous white people wearing Bafana Bafana (the South African national team) jerseys! And they had cheap beers. This ridiculous music video contains shots of people dancing sokkie, and appears to have been filmed at Presley's.



Almost immediately upon entering Presley's, two large white drunk girls asked us to buy them tequila shots, and we obliged. We tried to make conversation, but we really couldn't understand what they were trying to say, even though it was English. Then, we started talking to a guy named Werner (pronounced "Vearrrnearrr") who implored us to dance with his attractive 6'2" girlfriend so he wouldn't have to. We said, chivalrously, "Sure, why not," and both danced with her for a song. While not expert in sokkie, our Texas Two-Step skills came in handy. We couldn't stay a whole lot longer because the USA-England game loomed the next day, but Presley's was awesome.