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
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
- Bicycles, or parts of
- Old tumble washing machine to convert
- Any mechanical devices
- Seeds to plant
- Fruit tree and herb babies
- Bamboo plants
- Old clothes for recreating radiant new ones
- Ribbons / Beads / Material / Rope / String
- Incense
- Healthy food of any sort, especially olive oil, cider vinegar, soya/tamari sauce, Tahini, seeds, nuts, raisings
- Fresh fruit / veges
- Grains – Brown rice, millet, bulghar, quinoa, couscous
- Paper to write on
- Building materials, corrugated iron, windows, doors, glass, tools, good wood for making things
- Piping, hose
- Chicken wire
- Any percussion instruments – drums, tabla, shakers, flutes, triangles, tambourines, bells
- Candles
- Cushions / rugs / mats
- Crystals
- Wooden boards & black paint & chalk for blackboards
- Healthy toothpaste, natural creams (organic / biodegradable)
- Irrigation system piping
- Mode of transport – cart, horse, truck
- Gas cylinders
- Old geyser & pipe / donkey for hot water
- Information/ expertise on making sustainable / energy technology
- Internet networking / advertising
- Watering cans
- Accommodation (at moment – sheltered R50p.n. for up to 4 persons, otherwise camping R40p.n. or 4 hours woofing work or exchange ) for Rest/ Retreat/ Time in nature.
- Wellbeing Service – Sangoma bone readings, mayan calendar in-depth life purpose energy readings, card readings, massage, life coaching, tai chi & chi kung, meditation and chanting, shiatsu, personal African steaming sweats, ceremonies, spiritual healing, supported vision quests, earth wisdom practices. Tasty meals with what’s available.
- Beautiful natural surroundings.
- Alive and joyful river to swim in.
- Guided hiking trails.
- Music and singing jamming & storytelling around fire evenings…
- Venue for workshop leaders – food garden however is still growing, so workshop leader would have to bring bulk of specialised food requirements. We can cook, and offer special swazi traditional food menu in co-operation with produce from local farming community.
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