Our heritage
Our family has a strong and healthy heritage from both Louis and Lee's side of the family...
This motivates us to stand against cultural and seasonal tides and helps keeps us grounded in raising the next generation of Eksteen's... to be leaders, adventurers and warriors... just like their forefathers.
A Boer
Countless times I have been asked the curious question "what is a Boer?". A precious few times I have been able to delve into a history lesson of the South African people, but most often I am limited to my shortened version, simply - "a settler".
That famous British author Arthur Conan Doyle, however, following his service as a field medic during the Second Anglo-Boer War, elaborated with this more eloquent answer: "Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and fortune and left their country for ever at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth. Take this formidable group of people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the hunstmen, the marksmen, and the rider.
Then, finally, put a finer temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in one individual, and you have the modern Boer - the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Brittain. ...Napoleon and all his veterans have never treated us so roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology and their inconviently modern rifles." (taken from "The Great Boer War", September 1903).
Love it.
Eksteen's in South Africa
Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen, born February 23, 1678 in Lobenstein, Germany (pictured), was the progenitor of the Eksteen family
in South Africa arriving in 1702 (age 24)
on the ship "Oostersteyn". He became a successful businessman, owning a fishery and some farms (current day Bellville), and was involved in the citizenry and several business associations. Died September 29, 1741 in Cape Town.
Over the ensuing hundred years the Eksteen family proliferated and eventually moved north as part of the Great Trek of 1834, settling in the boer republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.
On October 31, 1942 in Volksrust, Transvaal a baby boy Eksteen was born, and nicknamed "koedoe" by the attending nurse (he probably kicked like the buck). In 1969 he would marry Jeanette Swanepoel of Johannesburg and together they would have three sons, Riaan, Francois and Louis.
Eksteen's in another colony
Almost three hundred years after Hendrik Oostwald left his homeland for a new country, his descendant Louis Cornelius Eksteen and his newly-wed Hannah-Lee, left South Africa for another new country - the United States of America. Is Louis the progenitor of the Eksteen family in this third continent? Well within a short nine years, four more Eksteen's would be added to the family clan in Los Angeles. It seems the Eksteen's are proliferating again...
"If you do not stand for something, then you will fall for almost anything."
"The question is not what would a king do... ask yourself what would a free man do?" - Queen Gorgo to King Leonidas before the Spartan Battle of Thermopylae.
*Battle scenes pictured are courtesy of the motion picture "300".
The land of our Fathers
Regardless of the location, we hear The Call "to defend, to love, to hold [so] that the heritage [our fathers] gave us for our children yet may be." (excerpt from SA Anthem).
Having lived on two continents, I realize that the real "heritage our fathers gave us" is not a nationalistic one, but rather a universally recognizable one. It has been given by the Pilgrim fathers to their sons, and by the Boer patriarchs to theirs. In fact each country, born to be free, has received and impartation of courage and conviction for defense of values. It is this heroic nature that is tested and purified in battle and interestingly requires neither nationality nor even victory itself. Although it seems to be cultivated by patriotism and popularized through success, this nature is passed on through people willing to engage despite the odds. These are the citizens of Thermopylae, Amajuba, of Colenso and of Gettysburg.
Today, we find ourselves in an era of older nations, some mature and some immature in their character. Countries born in previous centuries, disciplined and tempered in the cauldrons of pilgramige and war, are now wobbling in the day of glutony and globalization. With each new generation receiving fewer batons of courage and sacrifice from their forebearers, our nations' children are no longer receiving a battle-disciplined heritage and instead are leaving a narsisistic napalm for their offspring. Thus, when the courage of nations fail, it will be left to the family and ulitimatley the scattered individual to stand with his brothers of same ilk whereever they find themselves: A league of nation-neutral citizens united through a similar heritage and desire for values to prevail. It is here, in this beloved country - a country comprised of the hearts of its constituents - that strength and diversity are forged into resilience. We protect its boundaries of principles from an invisible enemy of compromise and comfort. From its mountain tops, distance and time are not essential. In its fertile plains we raise warriors for right-ness and on its shores we walk barefeet with our loved ones. It is here that we celebrate a triumphant future!
What shall unite us? Shall convenience, or comfort, or entertainment, or ethnicity, or wealth, or appearance, or proximity, or protection? Yet in all these things we are more than bound together through our love for one another. For I am persuaded that neither worldly comfort nor things money can buy shall be able to instill in us the courage and conviction to stand as one when our seen or unseen enemies want to isolate and destroy us. It is then that our commitment and love for each other, our common faith and the values that we have made our own will determine whether we endure united or fade from memory. [adapted from Romans 8:35-39]
We are such citizens.
We are Eksteens.
This is the land of our fathers.
To such a beloved country do we belong.
And so do you. Will you join us?