Well here I am, swinging over the chasm hoping I'm gonna land in new time, new world, ha ha. I want to find land that somebody wants to share, and bring together people who want to share. Individuals of all ages and cultures who know that we are all equal in that we all have some particular and original passions to share. I want to come together to create a life that is respectful of earth wisdom and innovative, humorous and fun, where there is time to make music and dance and sing as well as work, and time to contemplate and give thanks. Where there is spontaneous and flexible leadership, and humility. Where youth are free to express themselves, and adults are open to learning anew. I have been dreaming and imagining this for years. The foundation has to appear now! Hey you's out there, now is the time, let's come together now! Share our resources to create a place of shared space and personal space that will be a living model of beauty and harmony and awareness.
Well here I am, sometimes I feel so excited, and sometimes I feel such a great lassitude.... Excitement to dance, for the magic of the new, and then lassitude for how to break through into how i've never done things before... To be continued....
 Sara, Mark and Sven unloading Sven's magical bush toilet!  Sara's car got all the way there, justabout! Spent a lovely Christmas with my friend, Sara, from UK who was out visiting and wanted to experience Umphakatsi too. She is an acupuncturist and chi kung teacher, so we have an understanding in common. We had great adventures getting there, and a real communal Christmas together with Mark and Winnie and Lara and Erin, their girls, and Sven and Hilda who also arrived. I then went to Cape Town to see my brother Dave and fam over new year. Met up with Sara again and we had more exploratory adventures going to Hermanus and back along the coast. It was real fun, thank you Sara for your generous friendship, missing you! Back to Johannesburg to attend the Umphakatsi AGM, which got postponed till March, so I returned to Umphakatsi a while. Things moving, with new people joined, Chamilla, James, Michael, Jason and they are all coming at weekends to talk about how to move forward. A spaces of love valley community forming! The AGM was encouraging, and Sarah had lots to tell us about ecovillage design and living after attendance of the Ecovillage Conference in Germany and her visits as an ambassador for the Global Ecovillage network, to Ghana, Senegal and Egypt. This was soon followed by an ecovillage design course run by Sarah and attended by several members, which I missed unfortunately, due to a commitment I had previously made to housesit for a friend who was going away. But there will be more. After a year of being there largely on my own, I was longing to be with people again, and a year of not earning has meant I have to be back in the city for a while where I am now trying to get clearer how I can offer my services to the right people…(see my Carolyn-giving day this Sunday on about me page – if you in the vicinity you’re invited!) and earn money being me and doing what I enjoy. But it has always been a kind of anathema to me to charge for the kind of things I do, my eternal conundrum. Plus being without a car in SA is kinda like an endurance test in getting anywhere! I am struggling with working out how I can do things differently, without knowing how or what it is I should do different. Anyone who knows me can shed any light on that? In this light, I really want to join a shamanic retreat and training in Peru in the Amazon in November, to heal these deep ancestral issues that limit me, purify myself and contribute more powerfully to global transmissions for planetary healing. So much money to raise! I intend to raise what I can but I have also set up www.gofundme.com/q275c to gratefully receive any donations the universe might send me! Thank you! In this strange time of increasing external chaos and yet exciting possibility of us all coming together to help each other on a scale we’ve forgotten to imagine, I wish you all abundance and healing and love. May the new world of beauty and love manifest as soon as possible! When we all live the beauty and art of who we are in a limitless way!  Can't get it to go strait up, yup i'm a horizontal fairy... UMPHAKATSI TILL XMAS & COP17 Soon after rainbow, I saw One Earth Festival was happening at Elandskrans in Watervalboven, not too far away, and not having danced in a long time, just had to go! Caught a bus at 5.30am with my backpack to just after Badplaas, where the laughing bus dropped me at the turnoff to hitch to Machadodorp. I eventually shared the back of a bakkie with some friendly people, and the eloquent Swazi driver dropped me on the N4, where after a while a kind Sotho driver transporting tanks dropped me at the road into Watervalboven. As I walked into town a kind Afrikaans lady offered me a lift to Elandskrans, gave me her packet of slap chips and lectured me all the way on how Jesus was the only one who could save the world! I was officially the first unofficial arrival at One Earth, but they graciously told me to set up my tent and await orders for working a shift for my ticket. As I was resting, Derek who’d been in our Namibia expedition, arrived with Candy, and Hugo, his DJ friend, and Steph and Anthony and gradually Karolina and Michael and more… and all camped at my tree too! Then followed 3 days of ecstatic and continuous dancing to amazing music! I wrote the daily mayan dreamspell energy readout on a big board, and Ewald and Soozi arrived with Kathy and Fleurbaby, an d did a lovely 11-11 pipe ceremony. On my shift at the gate I worked with Yvette, and met her friend Trippy, an amazing artist who had created a 4-elements chill tent and made totems for the 4 directions in the circle, and beautiful dreamcatchers. On the last night was having such a lovely dance, just went with the wild storm that ricocheted through the stretchie while we were all gyrating underneath! So I was exhausted on Monday and missed lifts, ended up having to walk out on Tues right till the highway, where I got a lift to Machododorp. I stood hitching for a while, but it was already too late to get the bus from Nhlazatshe to Steyns, so I went looking for a place to sleep… In Build-it buying some gas for my little stove, the kind shop lady asked me about where I had been and where I was going, and then she ran off to ask a tannie if I could sleep in my tent on her lawn. The kind tannie graciously led me to a patch of lawn, offered me the tap, and let me use her bathroom! Next morning early I was on the road, and got a lift with a kind Zulu man who dropped me at a taxi stop where I was soon off to Nhlazatshe, with time to internet before catching the bus! The walk back from the village was hard, but I made it again! Then Sarah, who was just off to Egypt, asked me to escort 2 young people to COP17, to join a group of young people there. Managed to get in contact with the kids and Walter Mugove Nyika, from Malawi seedingschools project (www.seedingschools.org), who had organised this trip to empower young people to speak out creatively about climate change. Me, Ndumiso and Smange, two teenagers from Steynsdorp finally reached Durban after a high endurance trip of 3 taxi trips and joined the lovely crowd: Walter Mugove, a permaculture trainer in Malawi, Alex and Millie, two volunteers from UK who had raised the money for the children’s caravan project, Kerry-Ann, a volunteer UK drama teacher who had come to formulate the performance with the kids’ poetic offerings, Gertrude, a community permaculturist and amazing lady from Zambia, with Mayeba, a young Zambian boy. From Malawi came two amazing kids, Jasper and Iptisaam, who had written beautiful poems. And from Eastern Cape, Nokwanda and Mzamo who had also helped organise everything, with Nonhle, a music motivator, and 3 lovely young people, Siyabonga and Lovu, amazing dancers, and Portia, an amazing singer and dancer. And there was also Chiya, the admin asst. for the project who was always smiling, and we were joined briefly by Charles, a gentle smiling man, who was on the board of trustees, from Malawi. And the next day all the young persons produced their offerings and together with Kerry a performance was created! Of singing, music, poems, a small play, and the Mayan invocation to all the directions! We had a great time practising at Banana Backpackers where we were all staying, meeting loads of people from all over the world who had come to attend COP17 and eating abundant meals together which we shared in preparing. We attended some lectures at UKZN, the children performed there, and were recorded singing live on SABC3, got a trip or two in to the beach, and the children attended a tree-planting workshop, registering to become active representatives for planting trees. And Gertrude and I, because we were both vegetarian, together with Chiya, got to go the Vegan banquet sponsored by Master Ching Hai at the Olive Convention Centre, which was a real treat! We were treated as honourable guests by hosts and hostesses dressed up in beautiful costumes from around the world, and served a six-course gourmet vegan meal while listening to speeches and the film 11th hour, about how the highest contributor to climate change is actually the livestock meat industry, which pours tons of methane into the atmosphere, not to mention the deforestation, overgrazing and cruelty that goes with it. The livestock industry generates more than 50% of total global emissions. Because methane dissolves faster than carbon dioxide, if we stopped eating meat, the situation would rebalance far faster, in fact within a few months! But of course, who of you meat eaters are going to stop? Just like who is going to stop frantically pursuing profit despite the fact that our current lifestyle and business approach obviously are a danger towards our own extinction! Unless we take the giant step out of this enslavement to a greedy dinosaur system that ignores the spirit of Life, and become warriors for taking care of ourselves, our fellowman and our earth, this is our one-way ticket mate! I opted out long ago, and although I live a totally insecure life, I have become immensely stronger in being with whatever happens, happy with what I have, content with simplicity, and trusting and grateful every day for what the universe provides. I have met and connected with so many kind and amazing people, and given, received and shared. I am still a trainee on the path of maintaining intent, and I still go for crisps and chocolate when I am in mall and supermarket world, but I am hugely glad when I escape the environment that goes with it of ugly buildings and concrete and huge motorways and millions of cars, and I can lie back on a cool rock under a tree. ‘We’ve got to come together now to listen to our hearts, we’ve got to come together now and turn living into art.’ That’s a song of mine. So back here at Umphakatsi and faced with the challenges of working to change the mindset of only money can create and of destroying nature, here I sit again. I would love a home and deep love and a space of love natural paradise and community, children all around, making beautiful things and singing and dancing. It is sometimes hard to keep going, but I just live from day to day, and somehow regenerate trust that my intent will manifest someday, if I just do what needs to be done today.  Planning at Banana Backpackers base with Walter Mugove Nyika  From back row, l-r: Kerry, Smange, Siyabonga, Iptisaam, Portia, Nonhle, Ndumiso, Jasper, Lovu, Mayeba - the performance grouop  back row, l-r: Kerry, Gertrude, Alex, Ndumiso, Chiya, Siyabonga, Smange, Mzamo, Mayeba, Millie, Portia, Iptisaam, Jasper, Lovu  Nonkwanda & Nonhle  We thought thse would be our only guests! Wow, i've just been to ONE EARTH festival at Elands Krans and did we dans? Yeh, yeh, yeh! Thank you all my dancing friends! SPRING AT UMPHAKATSI! I am back! On my own with awakening frogs – amazing croaking chorus through the night! Green and red sunbirds’ amazing cheeping songs while they catch the last of the orange and pink aloe flowers. A variety of other wee birds. An owl now lives in the valley! Cows roaming around. Through the dry season this year there have been many fires, everything is bare, except for the beautiful aloes which have been flowering. I am on my own again, Sarah in germany attending an ecovillage conference. Hilda, Sven and Petra come every 2nd weekend or so – they are wanting to come live here too, and build their space of Love in the valley. And Mark and Winnie, two enthusiastic recyclists too, who have great plans, wow, exciting the potential! By an amazing flow of synchronicity, Sven and Petra and Mark and Winnie have spoken to the headman, visited the chief, got their certificates and their space of Love plots! Mark and Winnie’s is neighbouring Umphakatsi a bit downriver, and Sven and Petra’s is upriver a way, deeper in the gorge. With the help of builders and thatchers from the village, Mark and Winnie have erected a frame and thatched roof and made a basic fence to keep cows out. They plan to build the walls themselves with recycled material. Sven and Petra also fence their place and cut a track to it through the lantana.   Visiting Ngwenya with Sven & Petra  Mark & Winnie Things are moving! Here at Umphakatsi, Sarah’s dad erects a frame for a new sleeping pozzie with the help of a crowd of village kids, and thatchers also arrive, and he’s laying a pipe from a side-stream up to here as well. Every weekend loads of activity. And Sarah’s mango project collaborating with Mpumulanga officials, is also being marked out. Sarah is back and then gone to work in Joburg and then to ecovillage network in the Gambia, and Rainbow gathering about to start too. I am excited having been virtually on my own for about six weeks, watering all the vegetables and little fruit trees and seedlings on my own. Even composed a song about it on my ukulele, chorus goes like this: Filling up buckets at the river, Filling up buckets at the Jo Jo, and I carry them here and I carry them there and I carry them everywhere… I had a friend for a week! A domestic duck arrived out of nowhere and plonked itself in a pool down by the river, I fed it some of my food and maize corn and it quacked away and got quite friendly in the end. It was determined to be wild, trying to make friends with the wild ducks, but they were shy. And then one Saturday I had to go to the village, and when I came back it was gone. The pool was sad and silent. I wrote a story. Well a month later, and Rainbow is finished, I am back here and recapitulating my life. Certainly was a strange rainbow, spiritual, profound in some respects and disappointing in others. I was imagining crowds of people as I do, but there were only a few of us at any given time. Rosa, from Holland, and Claire came to get it started, and we found a lovely site on the hill opposite Mark & Winnie’s, next to the river. But first a fire threatened the site, Rosa and I managed to put it out with buckets of water near the river, and with the help of Loverboy, a guy from the village and a few others working on Mark and Winnie’s place. Then rosa and I carried everything over in tins and boxes and bags. We had done a ceremony, us three, at the heart space calling the right people to come and giving thanks. We tried putting up the big rainbow tent twice, but wind blew it down. But we had a cool spot by the river under Alosha’s squeezie-stretchie, and a healing spot with a stone shrine of lovely stones that offered themselves, and a sort of a kitchen. Aumji came for a weekend with a load of abundant supplies, Rosa dug a shit pit and Aumji a trough around the fire pit. It rained and we ate beautiful meals, and Lara and Erin, Mark & Winnie’s amazing girls, kept us company and shared a beautiful ceremony with me, Chief Arvol Looking Horse’s Ceremony for Peace and Co-operation. The words they spoke were wise and sincere, I was honoured. After the weekend Aumji took Rosa away, and Claire decided to rejoin after a time out by herself. Sam and Shine from Zuvuya arrived with daughter, Oriah, and the girls happily played days by the river. Sam and Shine were disappointed about there being no people, but we had a good few days, until Mark and Winnie left, and then them. A guy called Andrew arrived out of the blue and camped a few days, but disappeared when I got sick. I came down with some bug or other, but big doses of citricidal soon had me right again. And then with a big blast of amazing heart energy, arrived Haroun, with Suzanne, a biking warrior girl who had got stuck in Badplaas, and Tertius, who had brought a huge solar dish for cooking food for hundreds of people, a new solar oven and a sweet amazingly efficient little stove that just uses a few twigs to boil a pot – all donated by a company for demonstration. And then a wild few days with Haroun and Suzanne howling and leaping about, and a surprise arrival of Dan and Marie from Pretoria, amazingly friendly lovely persons, who brought and shared all their stuff, including a massage table, and we had a wild massage session under the stretchie before they left. And then arrived Linzi and Zahira, two lovely girls from Joburg, who also stayed a few days. With everyone we had some great evenings around the fire, omming and singing and jamming. Marie sang amazingly, Linzi brought her drum and flute and mouth organ and played beautiful stuff, and Zahira taught us a beautiful song, and Suzanne found her rhythm on the drum. And one day was Haroun’s birthday! And we made a wonderful psychedelic cake bread, with dates and coconut oil in it, and fruit on top with melted chocolate and played all day. Before Haroun left, we went through a ricocheting rocketing blast of a storm, rain, lightning, wind and thunder, omming and trusting in Spirit inside the little spaceships of our tents. Claire had gone to meet her friend Simon’s arrival at the village, and they got caught out in the storm in the dark, but they knocked on the door of a hut and were treated to an amazingly hospitable night of shelter and ubuntu, arriving back glowing the next morning! And then Haroun had to leave, and a few more days we stayed – some chlled out hot days, me and Suzanne playing by the river and making small fires to sit around in the evening. We had a lovely final ceremony, each speaking for directions of the Sacred 20 count, and the next evening, speaking our experience of the Rainbow and giving thanks. We had also been visited by various youth from the village over the time, and Enoch the headman, came by a few times as well. All in all, although I was sad more people didn’t come, it was a lovely time we had those of us who were there. It was a lovely time sleeping on the land, sitting around fires, singing and harmonising, and bathing in the ever cool river, and sharing lovely meals. Thank you to you all for everything you brought and shared of yourselves. Thank you for the gift to the land of Love, and thank you to the land for having us! We all came through the challenge! I am stronger in me, Suzanne has found in her her breatharian wizard, Haroun found the spot for a rainbow geodesic dome, Claire been travelling through cycles of leaving and healing… And now, hmm, a next stage dawns… not sure what it is… keep on going with spine straight sister… Oneness consciousness beckoning me all the time. Love.  Dan & Marie and Haroun & Suzanne  Massage magic!  Aumji, Rosa and Winnie's kaleidoscope kids, Lara and Erin  The heart space down at the river...  Local friends from the village came visiting to join in...  Yup, me!  Sacred Kwekerboom! Wow, nearly back after a long time, can’t wait to greet the valley and the river… Been in Joburg for a while, cape town, up to Namibia to visit Bushmen and now in Nelspruit…
Was blessed in Joburg – thank you so much Soozi and Haroun for your help in spreading the word, and Fritz and Elba for use of your place. In Cape Town I was able to catch up with my beloved brother Dave and Kim and Nina and friends Eastlynne, Astrid, Rosemary, Sheri, Ingrid, Andre and Barbara. And I joined the Space of Love gathering at the Blue Hippo and the lovely people there! And then on a mad trip with crowd to visit !Gubi lion shaman and his family in Namibia. It was quite wild all the unexpected things that happened… 3 days travelling up, with sights of the Eye of Kuruman, a beautiful natural spring pool, the Kwekerboom forest and giants stone playground, and getting lost in desert corridors late at night, till we reached the Bushmen’s sandy encampment. The Bushman family were lovely people but I was saddened that they were no longer free to live their bush life. They are now contained in corridor 18, impoverished, harassed by herero locals, politically ignored, and they were still processing the murder of their daughter by her husband the previous year. Still free, he appeared to be a psychotic of some sort, as we got news that he murdered his next wife in another place while we were there. The family had not sung or danced since, so when they did it seemed to be to sing out their sadness. Nevertheless around the fire, they still make their jokes and laugh their contagious laugh. We had a magic moment of all clapping and singing and making music that will stay with me forever. But they had many missions they wanted to fulfil while we were there, so each day was demanding a trip out on the long distances of dust road. It was on one of these that Charmayne’s car rolled, luckily no one was seriously hurt, but the car was a write-off. Despite all bizarre happenings, it was beautiful connecting with the family, and between us in the crowd. The memories that stay with me are all the animals – cocks, donkeys, goats, horses, cows, kittens, all the birds we saw – eagles, hawks, hornbills, and beautifully coloured birds, red and black, turquoise, green and orange, black and white, black and orange… and dancing and playing with beautiful little children. But, times are a changin’ and who knows what will be next? Time to tune into our hearts and follow our greatest heart-inspired imaginings! And me I have to get used to being a baby elder, 52 I am turning, second time around my medicine wheel!… May I fulfil my purpose… May we all Love  And this is the view from the toilet!  Our fantastic new compost toilet constructed together at Space of Love!  funny things me making...  Steynsdorp dancing girls...  Sangoma's a'plenty Just me or me and Sarah for a while, more electrifying lightning and thunder storms moving through the valley, and we planting still, weeding, and preparing for the Space of Love, excited-like. The gas runs out and we have a week of no gas and wet grey cold weather, the wood is wet and hard to make fire. There is a new bottle of gas at Sarah’s house but we have no way of getting it here… till Sarah’s dad comes to visit, but the track is wet and his car not working… Not much activity with the kids cause it’s holidays and they are here and there. Tertius is away, we cook one day and have loads of leftovers for a few days more. Sarah teaches me how to roast peanuts and cook mealie-samp swazi-style on the fire, and we try to preserve some mealie cobs by parboiling them and then hanging them out to dry. But the weather is too wet and the naughty rats get them. A constant battle with rats. They act like they own the place, and run into the hut before dark and then the whole night they are running about and shredding things. We have to put all food into metal cupboards and slowly they get the message that outside there’s more food. I am writing, writing, writing. Children’s stories and then my life story – just the whole account so I can cast it to the wind in an unprecious way, have thoughts of making it into some kind of rolling stone myth… My secret longings for deep love and home overwhelm me… I make a trip to Nelspruit about a potential part-time job lecturing English 1 and 2 to students at the Business Graduate Institute, a multi-national owned money-making racket out of students it appears to me, but maybe I can give them a fresh perspective and maybe it will be good experience for me, I would have to commute and stay a few nights at Megan’s, but to earn money would be great! It feels quite exciting, back to the importance of being earnest! But sadly, although the interview is ok, maybe my CV is too wild, I don’t get it. Maybe it’s cause I have to get an academic transcript, and I am back at Umphakatsi and don’t see e-mail from Rhodes saying I have to pay R250 for that, and a further R500 for my UK MA to be evaluated. The anticipated Huge Space of Love Gathering only brings a few people, but lovely ones: Ewald and Soozi and daughter Luca who loves to play and baby Fleur who is always smiling and laughing, and Jean another young sangoma who drums and chants and does ceremonies morning and eve and rushes about looking for medicine plants; Tertius; lovely couple Vaughn and Karen and their outspoken fresh daughter Keyo; and networking wizard Haroun Kola and his bevy of lovely lady friends Rianna, Tsholo and Vuyo; and Nonkululeko, priceless poet friend of Sarah’s gets here with them too. We all help to build a new compost toilet on top of the old one, now it’s like a watchtower with an amazing view over the valley, and yesterday’s offerings hurtle down a long long drop that will take years to fill! A group of children from the village and tutored by Thoko, walk to come and dance for us, and Soozi and helpers produce a huge amount of rice and beans and pumpkin for us all to eat. And then in the afternoon Sangoma Mandla arrives on a visit with accompanying sangomas dressed in the most regal finery, and we have a full-on photo session and the ancestors dance and speak to Ewald through Mekwaas and another sangoma too, accompanied by wild drumming and jumping. We chant and drum around the fire in the eve, and the next day walk up to the waterfall, where everyone is blessed with a water ceremony under the waterfall. We do Chief Arvol Looking Horse’s pipe ceremony envisioning peace and co-operation among all Life’s kingdoms, with Soozi’s beautiful new pipe and aromatic herbs! And we have a long cozy dozy story-telling session on mattresses in the hut, that turns into a bit of fooling, where we all become characters in the story and make it up as we go along! And Soozi and Luca bring a whole box of crayons and paper and beads for me to use with the children! Thank you so much. And then everyone’s leaving! I catch a lift with Ewald and Soozi to Badplaas for the internet, to send more details of Thoko’s activities to Shoprite Women of the Year award. I have nominated Sarah in Educator category and Thoko in youth mover category! If they win they will get R100,000 for their projects! Hold thumbs! I am offered a couch to sleep on by Keith, who lives in a cottage with his little son Keyo. He works at the nearby Inkomati mine which tears out about 19 tons of minerals from the earth each day – there’s everything there, gold, uranium, silver, copper, platinum and loads of asbestos. Poor people who work there! It is owned by someone called Mr Matsepho who is reputed to be the 9th richest man in Africa. He apparently started mining with a huge input of Russian funding. Keith would rather be growing vegetables and shows me his big veggie garden, where he has loads of things growing, including huge bushes of basil and chillies. He gives me seeds to take back to Umphakatsi. And then I’m back at Umphakatsi, with Sarah and Tertius. According to the natural time calendar we are in the central column, the spine, of the Tzolkin, which is the Court of Magic where things transform and turn around. We go through a bit of a wobbly in the group which helps us to reclarify our visions of abundance generating projects that will bring income and sustainability to us and the community of Steynsdorp. We fill in lots of forms applying for funding all over the place. My money is getting low. I have to generate some money for myself to carry on subsisting, so a trip to the outside world has to be made for a while. I am also starting to feel kind of isolated and feel a need to reconnect with friends… So, please connect! Am on internet for a month! Love  dolls i made for kids at creche out of mango pips, macadamia shells & grass & chip packets. Soon destroyed!  Thoko, Thembisile and kids at the creche... Wow the power to endure the long run of days! Beauty all around but everything takes time to manifest… Hot dry wind days, nights becoming cooler, but millions of stars and the milky way shining down on us! I am still trudging to the village twice a week to play with the children at the crèche, and the weekly class with little ones at school. We play animals and sing songs that Sarah helps me to translate in Siswati, which I am learning painstakingly slowly. I bought some paper and a few crayons last trip in Nelspruit, and a little blackboard and some chalk, and Luca, a recent young visitor left some bubbles – these meagre activities the children pounce on like ants, screaming wildly. It is fun, I love these children dearly, but after a few hours of trying to communicate and then the walk back, I’m quite exhausted. Still dreaming of circles and activities with older kids, my language problem makes any organising take that much longer… We’ve been eating well with produce from the garden, tomatoes, cassava & pumpkin leaves, chives, parsley added to staples like beans and rice or mealie pap. Peanuts, green beans, mealies, pumpkins still on their way. Cannot complain, although I sometimes long for nibbly or sweet things, that in the city world one can resort to so easily. We have been blessed with lovely rich mandula fruits from the wild, and maroela, with which we are fermenting a brew. The three of us potter about doing chores or other more sedentary activities in the heat… it gets quite intense sometimes, although there is all this space and nature around us, we do trip over each other’s feet and personal habits and obsessions sometimes. In a heated moment of frustrated projection, it has been a good lesson to own what I may be cross or anxious about, relax and let it go. Although I feel huge gratitude for the blessings that are here, it hasn’t been easy all the time. Sometimes I go a bit crazy longing for a soulmate love and friends and a space of love home. But I have been playing my ukelele a lot, learning lots of chords, and occasionally producing a new song. And writing children’s stories, there’s now a hippo story and a baboon story, and a river story and a wasp story coming. And Frog, leopard and lizard all want to speak too… And I’ve been making hanging things, with stones and string and grass, that I hang around the place from trees… And it was great having Soozi and Ewald and Luca and Fleur visiting… Last week I went to Nhlazatsche, the nearest town, to attend the opening of Sangoma Mandla’s new ‘dropping’ centre providing 3 meals a day for orphans. He has miraculously acquired daily donations of vegetables and mealie pap and meat. He already runs 2 other drop-in centres/home based care programs staffed by volunteers for HIV/AIDS sufferers. And he is a practising Sangoma, and trains up-and-coming sangomas too. I slept over for two nights, helping prepare food for the big day. One morning, some people arrived for a femba, a ceremony to exorcise bewitching, and I was invited to attend. Various accoutrements like beads and special skirt and wig are piled on as Mandla goes deeper into trance, while the trainees vigorously drum a certain beat on cow-hide drums, and chant. It turns out this sick lady’s late pastor has bewitched her and he is ordered to leave. Mekwaas, a young trainee sangoma, tells me later that the femba always discovers the possessing spirit. Mekwaas has been in training for 4 months, visions in her dreams from her ancestors guided her there. Mandla’s daughter is also in training, a strong mature girl who is only in grade 10. She came to join in the drumming before going off to school. It is a hot day. The ceremony takes place in a blue and red-striped tent, attended by some officials from the Dept of Correctional Services (!), a headteacher, children, and the management and staff of drop-in centres. It is refreshing because everyone breaks into singing in between and sometimes during each speech. Then everyone receives lunch. I meet Faith, an amazing woman from Zimbabwe, who had to leave her children with her mother, to come to South Africa and earn money. She is a high-school teacher, counsellor and has managerial experience. She started off teaching at a private school, but she says it is so demanding and she got so exhausted she had to stop. She had no time to attend to her needs or pray or anything. So she has to come to volunteer at Mandla’s centre. She is amazingly cheerful, and crochets delicate white cloth, as she chats.  the opening of Mandla's dropping centre. Mandla is above the roses...  The big pot chefs...  And the happy recipients... Back at Umphakatsi days go by, hot, so a lot of time is spent carrying water for plants before the sun sets. I go twice a week to either play with the kids at the crèche or do the class at school with the little ones. They are completely wild, and jump and hang on me like fruit on a tree. I would like to just play, but we have to do ‘structured activities’. The school has some resources like paint and crayons and plasticine, so we have been using that, it all gets created in the moment! Thoko has just organised an additional Sunday afternoon activity session with children of all ages, and I meet up with them all on the Football field. 100 kids pinching me, hanging off me, climbing all over me! But we have a great time running around, dancing and singing, and they have a good laugh at me doing queer antics mirroring them! Unfortunately my grasp of Siswati is still too limited to really play good imagination games or create stories, so have to shelve that vision for a while… The kids have lovely names, like Evidence, Agreement, Beauty, Surprise, Thanks, Waiting, Patience, Quiet… Sarah arrives back from meetings in Joburg and Cape Town in a beaten-up old 4-wheel drive truck that she bought in Nelspruit for a borrowed R13,000 from her brother… It needs new tyres, windows, rust-repair and bearings and goes for a while, but doesn’t want to now…! This week I spent a morning making masks out of cardboard for the kids at school, they colour them in, and went wild dancing with them on. But then I was really disappointed, the teacher made them hand all their masks in for the school to keep, I was amazed, they couldn’t even take them home!  Virgin masks...  ... become interesting characters Full moon and equinox was a strange time, we have been bombarded with chem trails here, the day after full moon, the sky was a day glo orange, hot humid heat and haze, what are they doing? I have to take a trip before the end of the month, to use my internet airtime before it expires and send this to the world. The Space of Love Gathering is happening 2 weeks over Easter at end of April, come if you can make it!!!!! From 20 Apr – 2nd May includes informal and work gathering with structured activities on weekend of Fri 22 Apr – 25 Apr. See http://spaceoflove.co.za/2011-easter-sol-gathering-umphakatsi/
And here I am posting this in a café with a cappuccino and a piece of chocolate cake, God, what an indulgent treat! A HUGE lightning storm a few nights ago, lightning and thunder reverberating through me, the valley, the sky, veritably changing our very molecules in the moment, wot. I had to leave at 4am this morning to catch the bus at 5.30 zzzzzzzz Love  all of us before xmas, sangomas and all  Umphakatsi Peace Ecovillage Love Valley  sarah motha, the founder of Umphakatsi I am writing this at Umphakatsi in Mpumulanga. I haven’t yet managed to get my bloddy USB dongle to work. It is very remote so I haven’t been near the technosphere either since I arrived. My isolation ended when 9 adults and 3 children descended on the spot just before xmas! Such lovely people, bringing tons of love and abundance with them, made up of several sangomas and their kids, of whom Tertius who is also trying to live here is one sangoma, and some other lovely people. Soozi, one sangoma, did a water ceremony for all of us: we all had to write to our grandfather and grandmother ancestors what our dreams and what we wanted to heal, wrap it up with a coin and offerings, and then we all went down by the river and were bathed in the water, and threw our messages into the river, and then if we wanted we were cut and smeared with animal muti for protection. Everyone just stayed for a few days and then went off to their families in cities for xmas, and then it was just Tertius and me planting veggie seeds here and visioning, until Sarah Motha, the founder and other member came back Jan 2011.
2011! Happy New Year, dear loved ones all over the place, I am missing you all so much, come and visit! I am sending you love all the time! This is the most beautiful place, I have been overflowing with thanks every day like a fountain, and can sit staring at the hills and valley for ages on end. It is like a last haven of nature, from the madness of the world, so quite a bit of the time I have found myself crying about the state of the world, things I haven’t achieved, how to preserve this beauty, how to help awaken people to their own beauty and power and a new way of living that doesn’t destroy and exploit. So I have been praying and chanting and contemplating a lot in this time, to embrace my own shortcomings and also to conquer that deep archetypal South African fear that sometimes descends. But thankfully surrounded by so much natural beauty I have managed to largely keep that dissolved. Rolling green hills with sentinel aloes and funny trees, tall grass, and the joyful ever cascading gurgling river. Wild fierce lightning and thunder storms that last for hours sometimes! Hot humid days where horse flies bite you no end. Ticks waiting for you on leaning blades of grass… Incredibly coloured butterflies, some huge! Little birds of all descriptions, tweeting at all octaves. Lovely big frogs, my prince is one of those… The place was empty a while cause Sarah was away in Australia organising her PhD with a university over there, and Tertius has been earning money in Jbg after a trip to Portugal…and other people also up to things. It is 2,5 km from the nearest village at Steynsdorp. I have walked down twice to the village, where there is a small pink shop with only a few artificial foodstuffs in it. Luckily that day she had some fresh bananas and eggs! I made friends with a lovely young girl who came running up on long skinny limbs and with a sweet smile, called Evidence. The next time I met Thola Mamba, a beautiful nubile young woman pushing a wheelbarrow of washing and her little son, followed by her sister with another tub of washing on her head. They had just been to wash clothes down by the river, about a km away. There is no tap at all in the village. Everyone fetches their water from a dam nearby or the river further away. Thola invited me to come to her mother’s tuck shop, where I sat with her mother and brothers and sisters making up songs (learning Siswati), and the kids having a good laugh at me. I managed to buy a butternut here and some tennis biscuits, and they kindly gave me two pawpaws! (There are a few veges growing where I am staying but no fruit, so have serious longings for fruit often.) Thola told me at netball she is dangerous, like her name, the notorious mamba snake, as she was going off to another village to play a game. I was heading out and Evidence came running up with some mates, to take me to the women’s vegetable field, where I sloshed and sunk in mud till we reached a kind lady who sold me some green peppers and gave me two onions free. Lovely people I have met! I am hoping I can meet more people in the village in January and work with children and other exciting things. On the way to the village I had a funny experience! I passed a herd of cows, and as I walked on ahead, suddenly a bull began bellowing and grunting and hurtling hell for leather in my direction. I headed for the only tree around, and started trying to scale the trunk like a lizard, when a second bull also came after the first, but in my panic I only succeeded in slipping out of my slip slops, bashing my hat against the trunk which in turn bashed off my glasses and they went flying with my swazi dictionary off into the grass somewhere! And the bulls ran straight past! I had a good laugh, realising they were after a beautiful cow on heat, and sure enough, after I had found my bent glasses feeling around for a while in the grass, I passed them circling a demure white cow… Wow, 2011! Just two more years for the closing of this cycle! Yay! I am going to use this time and place to become a master of manifesting intent, together with others! My dear good friends, I think of you all often, and whisper thanks again for your kindnesses to me in the past few years… I wish you all abundance and joy and aliveness like never before! Anyone is welcome to visit, come volunteer, contribute your input, or just lie by the river and heal… Sarah is back! So there have been three of us feverishly planting FOOD to sustain us – mostly mealies, pumpkin, beans and peanuts at this time, but we have also been trying to plant herbs and lettuce (not great success so far), and we have planted more mango and avocado, beetroot, potato. We have been blessed with a harvest of tomatoes, spring onions and wild garlic, and cabbage that Sarah and Tertius planted before I got here, and from the wild we are receiving cassava, African wild cucumbers, blackjack spinach, and funny little items of wild fruit! We are constantly on the lookout… and eternally grateful for whatever food turns up! It is a lesson on non-attachment and appreciation living here! We went through a process of Earth wisdom council to clarify our common vision, and we have sat in circle identifying our common needs and action planning for 2011 and beyond… It feels such a privilege to be part of a new way forward that is inclusive of all people from whatever background who want to live in harmony with nature and share… I had to take a trip to Nelspruit to sort out my internet dongle prob, but managed to find a vodacom shop straight away with an internet specialist and after he sat on it for a while, it appeared to begin working, so I could catch up on internet yay, with a special special treat of a cappuccino in a café! (Despite this I still have not managed to get internet in the valley, so it means a trip every 6 weeks or so to go on internet and catch up!) It was an interesting journey to Nelspruit – had to leave Umphakatsi at 4am in the dark to walk the 2.5km along the track to the bus stop under the big tree in Steynsdorp village for 5.30. A local bus picks us up, with stops for others and mealies and things for market along the way, then we all change to another bus full of schoolchildren and other shoppers at some point, to Ekulatini where there is an education centre with several schools and all the children pile out in their immaculate uniforms. There a lady comes onto the bus selling delicious pieces of fried fish and bananas and home-roasted peanuts – amazing breakfast! And then we are on for longer part of trip on tar road through huge earth-depleting tree plantations to Barberton, where I am dropped at a taxi rank, and squash into a taxi for the remaining part of journey to Nelspruit. Nelspruit I have to say, although it is located in traces of incredible tropical natural vegetation, is now awful. It is a sprawling ugliness of wide highways flanked with huge factory size stores and car centres, huge shopping malls with all the same multi-national shops in them, and even huger highways to the huge football stadium constructed for the one football world cup game there in 2010... Madness. I am outraged by how South Africans are ripped off by bank charges and telephone mobile companies and accept it – the charges are outrageous! And cloaked in sugary special offers that amount to virtually nothing at all. Nelspruit is also, like most of South Africa, still the apartheid of have’s and have-not’s. The have’s here are largely white Afrikaners or black multi-national corporation and government employees, and they all buzz around in huge trucks or cars between their barred-up homes and the shopping malls and big steer restaurants. The rest of us trudge wearily along these miles of tar, nevertheless greeting each other with friendly smiles and hellos along the way. I am sleeping over a few nights at kind hospitality of Megan who has been to Umphakatsi and is a teacher at a secondary school here, although the bureaucracy of the system is driving her quite mad. She is staying in a cottage on a macadamia nut and avocado and litchi farm outside Nelspruit. It is very peaceful with big trees and tropical birds. There is a big electric fence around the farm, the owners live in an untouchable world… 3 sisters apparently inherited it when their parents died in a microlight plane accident. Megan has been chanting namyohorengyekyo for 20 years – she says she knows it works – for example, one night when at her parents house, several attackers were trying to make their way in, she began chanting loudly and even though there was an unlocked door, they missed it and left… I have been joining in her chanting at dawn and dusk, and enjoy the primal aleph sound of the continuous chant and what it is about, meditation afterwards is especially resonant. We are also doing it here at Umphakatsi, the three of us, and the birds join in, and visualization of our dreams and goals expand into light-filled dimensions… After a week of further planning goals, we all walked to Steynsdorp and spent two nights at Sarah’s parents house with the aim of doing some woofing for her parents and locals in exchange for possible food. Sarah’s parents are mega-achievers, and so one is not surprised that they have produced 8 mega-achiever children. Sarah’s mom farms about 60 goats, 30 cows, loads of chickens, and she grows mealies and weaves mats and I don’t know what else, and Sarah’s dad is involved in loads of projects in the community, and he also has his farming fields as well. So we herded cows and met locals and the headteacher of the local school, so we can also offer extra physics, maths or English lessons (in exchange for food or physical assistance at the ecovillage), and I can get some circles going with the children – I want to just get some sharing and storytelling circles going to develop understanding amongst us, and possibly extend it to Fooling and drama if the kids are interested. 87% of children here are in one-parent or no parent families, due to the AIDS death toll, so I am also trying to meet the social workers who work with the orphans around here, to see what can be arranged. I am trying to learn siSwati but as yet still feeble, and small children can’t speak English, but teenagers are pretty accomplished it seems, so we’ll see how things go. The space of Love gathering is happening here in April and the Ecovillage convergence may also be taking place here in June, and then the rainbow gathering in September. Lovely people come to these events, so I am very happy about that. We need help with building up the infrastructure here so we can accommodate people – like proper compost toilets, sleeping pozzies and pruning and cutting grass and firewood, and creating irrigating systems and fire barriers before the dry winter comes, and improving the fencing around to keep out roaming cows… So much for 3 people! Our goals are Harmony, Creativity and Sharing, and sustainable body, heart, mind and Spirit development. We want to interact with the locals as much as possible so they also are part of it. We are believing in abundance with all our might! I have attached pictures of all of us who were here before xmas, a picture of Sarah, and a picture of Umphakatsi. xxxxx I have now managed to connect with a woman who is a counsellor at the HIV clinic, who also runs a crèche, so I am spending some time at the crèche with the children, and we have been given a class once a week at the primary school with 4 & 5 year olds, which is exciting. Our dream is to start a life skills activity group for primary children on a Saturday that incorporates me learning Siswati while they learn English, games, making craft things, toys and percussion instruments, singing and dancing, sharing and creating stories and story books, growing a vegetable garden and recovering aspects of their cultural tradition, and to develop resources for this and also provide access for any children who are interested to follow this up at the ecovillage. At the moment there are no resources whatsoever, the crèche has nothing, so if anyone knows where we can obtain funding or materials like string, paint, tape, crayons, paper, seeds etc and especially picture books and such like. If you have any information, or can access donations of the above or can donate money, we would be most grateful. Money can be donated through: Human Rights Education Centre Absa Bank Branch code: 632005 Acct No. 4074541432 Please quote reference ‘Steynsdorp children activities’ or ‘Umphakatsi wishlist’, depending on what you are supporting. Thanks! UMPHAKATSI WISHLIST
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