Jenny’s Place

Jul 22, 2023

One of the most difficult things to really excel at is the art of a satisfying goodbye. Goodbyes, you see, are often awful. They well in your eyes. They churn in your stomach. They stick in your throat as words that don’t quite seem to fit the nostalgic nature of all that never again.

I’m trying to feel a satisfying goodbye as I walk around Jenny’s Place in Windhoek on a Friday afternoon. The news of the popular art and craft store’s imminent closure has spread like a bad rash and the ongoing going-out-of-business sale has left the store looking somewhat stripped.

In one of its heydays in a corner across the way from its current location, Jenny’s Place was where I went for cake with my mum and moments with myself. New to the city and trying to work out who and what I hoped to become, I’d sit in the sun in the al fresco courtyard of Jenny’s Place, feasting on quiche in between the bursts of creativity that coloured my inevitable notebook.

At the time, I didn’t have much money for its gift and craft shop, but I was grateful that the store fed the steady stream of patrons I would shamelessly people-watch from my little perch.

Eventually, the garden café closed. Jenny’s Place, originally named for the owner, moved into the interior corner that it occupies now and became something else to me entirely.

Instead of a space to be a brazen observer and play at being a writer, for me, Jenny’s Place, now under new ownership, became a prelude to a fun party. Filled with festive décor and accessories as well as hats and costumes for dress-up parties, Jenny’s Place was where I went to add a little wow to offbeat occasions, buying cardboard, glitter and glue for handmade birthday cards and various odds and ends to embellish gifts.

Years later, when my little sister got married, Jenny’s Place’s sparkly gold, laser-cut photobooth props were a hit. We sent the owner some last-minute images from the internet and everything was created to specification and perfection.

I tell the owner as much as I try and settle into a satisfying goodbye. A staff member points her out in the aisles, and I walk up, tell her thanks and that I’m sorry the shop is closing.

There’s no big secret to the closure, just simple economics.

I nod sagely and say “the pandemic”, suggesting the latest villain in many of our cashflow stories. But the owner shakes her head and says sales actually held pretty steady during the parade of lockdowns and confinement because so many people turned to art and crafting to stave off boredom, dive into their latent creativity and manage their mental health.

While Jenny’s Place was my spot for eats and writing, costumes and crafts, for many people, especially artists, it was a store of art supplies. Some watercolours, oil paints, pastels, canvases and crayons are still in stock a few days after Jenny’s Place announced its closure and I wonder if they’ll still be around for the auction.

The last day for shopping in-store is on 26 August and the auction will be held on location on 2 September.

I chat a little while with the owner, who is admirably accepting of the situation, acknowledging that the competition of similar stores is healthy but doesn’t guarantee survival and that she had a good run.

The mood, for the moment, is lighthearted as we stroll through the aisles and put our noses to the scented sachets that gave Jenny’s Place its distinct and homely smell. The owner will miss Jenny’s Place’s art classes but might continue holding some in time, maybe they’ll resume laser cutting cake toppers and wedding props or dive more deeply into her painting which is hung on some of the store’s walls.

There is possibility on the other side of endings. She feels it keenly and, suddenly, I do too.

I buy a token to remember the place by. A worn copy of a biography on the French Impressionist sculptor Rodin that’s curling at the edges and costs me 20 bucks. It’s been a satisfying goodbye. One made of memories, of thanks and vivid impressionist pages that carry me deep into the night.

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