In 1986, having received a sentence of 5-years suspended for 5-years having been caught brewing beer in Libya, I was assigned to South Africa. In January 1987 I found myself in the Northern Cape province, in a small town named campbell. According to Wikipedia it was renamed from Grootfontein in honour of the Reverend John Cambell. Although it's not the church in this photo, David Livingstone preached from the pulpit of Bartlett's church in this town.
When I was there in 1987, campbell was so far off the beaten track that it didn't have electricity. The locals were thinking they might get electricity in the next five years but I've never been back so I don't know. The gas station had a hand crank on the gas pumps and fueling my 5-liter, gasoline, in-line six-cylinder, Toyota Land Cruiser was a long, painful, experience. Since we set up camp just outside town and stayed there for about three weeks, we quickly provided the gas station with a generator to power the pumps for which the owners were extremely grateful. There would certainly not have been enough trade for them to have bought one for themselves.
I don't have an image of it but around this time I was driving one of our Toyota Hilux pickups down the dirt road shown in this image when the hood catch failed and the hood flipped up completely covering the windshield! That caused a few seconds of excitement all around.
This image was taken with a Canon A1 camera on Fujichrome Velvia film.
