The 90-year-old grandfather who travels 1,200 km a week to deliver his newspapers in South Africa

For four decades, Charl Francois Hugo, a 90-year-old man known to everyone in his community as Frans, has gotten into his car every Thursday to start the long journey from Calvinia, a city of less than 3,000 inhabitants located in southern South Africa, traveling all over the desert to distribute their newspapers. the quirky history of the nonagenarian is viral in the networks

If Frans does not do such commendable work, his newspapers in afrikaans language (The Messenger, Die Noordwester and Die Oewernuus) would probably disappear with him. For this reason, he has spent nearly forty years traveling more than 1,200 kilometers a week through the South African desert.

To do this, with a towel on your lap to protect yourself from the sun’s rays, a thermos of hot coffee and some hard-boiled eggs, Frans travels from south to north South Africa stopping in all the small towns. A journey that takes place in 18 hours. Everything to distribute the newspapers in Afrikaans.

According to the AFP agency, during his youth, Frans worked as a journalist in Cape Townhis hometown, but after 20 years he moved to Namibia for another ten years, until he could no longer take the pressure of working day and night and moved to the Karoo.

“The owner of the Calvinia printing press asked me if I was interested. At that time my daughter was interested, so I thought that with my son-in-law they could run the business and I would help them. After a few months, they got bored and I finished with this”remember.

Now, Frans, his wife, and three collaborators continue to produce the newspapers at a time when so many print newspapers around the world struggling to survive in the digital age. They work to publish a weekly issue in Afrikaans, one of the eleven official languages ​​of South Africa, inherited from the Dutch colonists, although sometimes they also include an issue in English.

For Frans, the survival of his newspapers demonstrates, on the contrary, that the isolated inhabitants of this semi-desert region of South Africa they need to maintain a connection. And as long as I have strength, they will receive news every Thursday without fail.

Frans says he is not worried about the future of his small press group. “I have no idea what will happen to him in five or ten years. But no, that doesn’t worry me.”.

Source: Elcomercio

jack

I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.