Ernestine Dean
Appearances
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Germany's big on Christmas. It's just such a huge festival. And there are many traditional Christmas markets. And there was one particular stand with a Christmas market selling roasted almonds.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
as if they were these kind of fingers, like wafting, pulling, drawing the end, these tendrils of the scent. It was so familiar and reminded me so much of my grandmother's kitchen. And I was back there when I smelled these roasted almonds, that sweet scent, this kind of nutty aroma, chestnutty, beautiful almond scent. And... It was just such a delicious experience for my body.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
You know how it is when you have something like that and you instantly are back. Your eyes are closed and you are this little one.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
If I looked at our stories as pages of a book, They're very important bookmarks that remind us of who we are and also really is who we are.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
My family was forcibly removed in April the 1960s, at the time of the Group Areas Act, where certain groups or certain places were zoned for white occupational
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
It took a lot out of my grandparents to do that. My grandfather made sure that some animals came along, and he said that when everything had been packed up, when it had been packed on the donkey car, it came to the back of the house, it was now empty, and he stood there. He just stood there and took a last look at this place that they had never imagined before. would at some stage not be home.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
And he said he stood there at the back of the house, out of the sight of the family and everyone, and he cried like a baby.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Constancia is a particularly fertile part of the cave. And so when I close my eyes, I'm already smelling that dark, rich soil. You know, that kind of chocolatey, brown, rich, grainy soil. A place of such comfort for us because it's where we come from.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
And when you walk in there, you walk on, you're crunching acorns with your feet and like a bed of pine leaves, which also brings like releases so much earth, a dryness of it in the summer. And then in the winter and autumn months where it's more wet, it also feels so alive. And that's where there's so many pine trees there and so many cones on the ground that we would collect.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
One of the things that we did with them as children was to go back and gather pinecones. bring it back to Gloucester Park, roast it either on the fire or in the wood stove. And this heat would then release the cones, open them and release or make visible pine kernels.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
The whole house smelled like, it was just this incredible roasted kind of caramel scent in the house. Good fire to begin with, the heat of the oven burning. and then the pine cones open. And then you take the pine kernels out and mash them, add brown sugar and butter, and there is nothing, nothing like that smell and that comfort that I experienced in childhood.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
You know, when I think of it now as a woman, as a mother of my own children, older than I was as a kid, I see that loss more now.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
You cannot breathe. You start kind of choking and the throat is constricting.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
The smell feels like an attack. It literally feels like an attack. It's a burning sensation, like your nasal passages will throw your mouth into your chest. Your eyes are burning and tearing. That's why it's called tear gas.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
There's so much grief there. There's so much sorrow there. And there's also so much joy and pride. We are so strong as a people.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
I need them to know certain rights that are also survival and hold our stories.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Because I'm on the other side of... The acute grief that I was raised in and the acute trauma of the times in apartheid. I'm starting to smell other things that must have been there. They were always there, but I'm smelling the lake. I'm smelling the wet, kind of the marshiness of this part of Grassy Park on the flay water, on the pond.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
What's beautiful is that there are many lilies here, Arum lilies, which is in a way the totem flower of my people of Constantia. It has a very, for me, it has a very fresh green scent, almost cucumber-like. You know, I'm sure it's not different for different people, but it has a green smell.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
It's been special to be able to walk out onto the water now. and be amongst the lilies here and feel somehow that my ancestors are with me.