Piet Plessis
It is a 70 km ride from Stella on a ,fortunately, well maintained gravel road. In a place like this it would be easy to convince me that the earth is a flat disc, because this is what you see in all directions.
Piet Plessis, a small town or settlement about 90 km to the north of Vryburg, geo-location: 26.1629°S, 24.409°E and 1157m altitute. A street view of one of the roads in the town is shown on the right. It is stated in Wikipedia that it had 1655 inhabitants in 2011. This would include the township next door. Hazarding a guess I would say there are about 100 to 150 people living in the traditional Piet Plessis.
I could not find much about the history of the place, when was it first established and why? There is nothing in the Internet and I also could not find anything in my books.
Checking Google maps, my curiosity was pricked when I noticed that there are four churches in this small settlement. They are all the Afrikaans churches, the Gereformeerde Kerk, the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK), the Hervormde Kerk and the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (NHK). Sorry, I have to stick to the Afrikaans names, in English they all translate to Reformed Church.
NG Church
I did find a bit of history about this church. The congregation of Vergeleë, which includes PP, ceded from Stella in 1945. This congregation built their first church in 1946. It very soon became too small. The new church shown in the picture was erected in 1962.
Other churches
The first one we saw in town was that of the Gereformeerde, otherwise known as the Doppers. It was the church of Paul Kruger. It doesn't look like it is well used and it needs a new coat of paint. I have to assume their numbers are down. The church building dates back to 1948.
The Hervormde Kerk was a new one for me. I still have to do some research how this came about. On the big board it states that the church was established in 1913. The building, according to the corner stone was erected in 1948.
And the last one, the Nederduitsch Hervormde, I didn't take a picture of, in fact we missed it completely.
Other features of note
In the middle of town is an empty plot. I was wondering why this was. In conversation with some of the locals we were told that this is where the town's inhabitants come together for a braai (barbeque). Social cohesion seems to be strong here.
There is a Afrikaans medium Primary School just as one enters the town.
The cemetery is out of town on the way to Vergelegen. It had a big lock around the gate, I could thus not pay it a visit.