kuruman | The Photographic Journey of bulldog.

Kuruman is a town with 12 000 odd inhabitants in Northern Cape province of South Africa, famous for the Eye of Kuruman, a geological feature bringing water from deep underground to the surface in the Kalahari Desert.

The Eye is the largest known natural spring in the southern hemisphere. Who says arid areas have no water.??

Kuruman is vastly known as the ‘the fountain of Christianity’ in Africa due to the flowing springs of the ‘Die Oog’ and its missionary history of the ‘Moffatt Mission’.

Kuruman is also known for the Moffat Mission where Robert Moffat, a Scottish missionary, was the first person to translate and print the entire Bible into the Setswana African language.

Robert Moffatt helped build the Moffatt Church which was completed in 1838. Kuruman was a London Missionary Society mission station founded by Robert Moffat in 1821 and the place where David Livingstone arrived for his first position as a missionary in 1841.

Now David Livingstone I’m sure you all know for his meeting with H. M. Stanley on 10 November 1871 which gave rise to the popular quotation "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" He was also reputed to be the first White discoverer to see the world famous Victoria Falls.. Now my knowledge of local history has been awakened as I never knew he started his career of expeditions from Kuruman..

But this photographic post is about the famous Eye of Kuruman… I will let the first photo speak further for me..

Now when they say this water is crystal clear the following photos will convince you of that fact…

and all this water bubbles out of this “EYE”…

The Kuruman River (which is dry except for flash floods after heavy rain), is named after the town. But with all this water bubbling out of the ground.. 20 000 000 litres per day (4 500 000 gallons per day) why would the river be a dry river.?? Ummm interesting, will have to study up a bit more on this… Okay the water is used to supply 71 000 people in the area.. lucky people, such crystal clear water, I wonder now if they need to purify it.???

I have not got the time to write out a long splurge of this site we discovered in our trip around the Northern Cape, but if you are ever between Danielskuil and Kuruman, do yourself a favour and visit the cave..

Thanks to Wikipedia..

Wonderwerk Cave is an archaeological site, formed originally as an ancient solution cavity in Dolomite rocks of the Kuruman Hills, situated between Danielskuil and Kuruman in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa. It is a National Heritage Site within a servitude ceded to and managed as a satellite of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley. Geologically, hillside erosion exposed the northern end of the cavity, which extends horizontally for about 140 m into the base of a hill. Accumulated deposits inside the cave, up to 7 m in depth, reflect natural sedimentation processes such as water and wind deposition as well as the activities of animals, birds and human ancestors over a period of some 2 million years. The site has been studied and excavated by archaeologists since the 1940s and research here generates important insights into human history in the subcontinent of Southern Africa.Evidence within Wonderwerk cave has been called the oldest controlled fire. Wonderwerk means “miracle” in the Afrikaans language.

Thanks to the Bulldog for the photos…

From the outside….