Water then has come in a slow droplet way, with rain in certain parts of the country where we definitely needed it. The silence, the vastness of Bergplaas gave me an opportunity to really lean into the elements and to feel into water’s qualities. Its peace, our need to reconcile, surrender, love.
As we transition from an Earth year to a Water year in the Dagara tradition, I cannot help but be drawn back again and again to this image taken in the Cedarberg mountains.
I am preparing to leave my beloved Western Cape, Muizenberg after 7 years. I am a great believer in honorable closures, after a wise teacher, now passed, Dr Angeles Arrien, reminded us, Honorable closures opens up to magnificent beginnings.
My love of nature came very late in life. Having left South Africa to live in London at the age of three until my late 40s, nature was something that we only “did” on summer holidays or weekends with friends who lived outside London.
Mbali Marais returned to South Africa, her birth place after 56 years, and immediately knew that the organisation she envisioned on a Vision Quest in 2003 in the USA was to be birthed on this mother land, Africa.