On a faintly misty morning in South Africa’s Kamiesberg mountain region, 79-year-old goatherd Hettie (Hettie Farmer) watches her flock as they hobble and nibble along the rough, khaki-colored landscape, and wonders for the first time if they wonder about her. Is she a mother to them, or an omnipotent ruler? She’s not inclined toward sentimentality or anthropomorphism, and she’s had enough children of her own in a long, hard-up life. But poetry colors pragmatism in the narration that runs