Supernatural in our mother city

We were fortunate enough to spend time at Lions Head, Table Mountain, with Jethro Boetman Louw, from Khoi Konnexion. Jethro has a wealth of knowledge about our deep heritage from the plants that grow on table mountain and many rocks and stones with which he appears to know each one intimately, like a family member or special animal. He accompanied us on the Bow, as we walked and created a beautiful ceremony and individual healing for us in a super secret spot ! Yes “secret”

Thanks Jethro for the wisdom you brought to the day and your ability to play and make music along the way. The leaders received knowledge about the plants as well as learning about the mountain, in a very special intimate transmission, a unique way to know about our heritage.

“It is your job and calling to listen and to carry” I am quietly told in what feels like the heart of the mountain, with the sun holding in its warm embrace the jagged rocks of Lion’s head and swallows riding the untamed winds above us. Cradled in the hollow of the earth’s risen surface, I feel still, with ancient sounds emanating from our guide, Jethro’s bow. Unable to explain the calm that seems to settle in the pit of my stomach and with each purposive strum and pluck of string between sun-hardened fingers, I feel aligned and attuned.

Jethro Louw, one of the members of an indigenous acoustic music group called Khoi Konnexion was our trusted guide on this walk up Lion’s head and as such, the facilitator of our growing understanding of sound in relation to nature and as instrumental in our connection to the natural world. The sounds issuing from the sub-Saharan African instrument being played, seemed not only to resonate with the elemental energies of the landscape, but in some inexplicable way, to draw them out. Angelique Michaels Trainee Leader, Indigenous Knowledge Leadership Program