Its daybreak in the Kruger to Canyon Biosphere Reserve. We are with the Elephants Alive team tracking a breeding herd of ellies. The pings of the telemetry instruments become more distinct as we near the dry riverbed. We stop the vehicle and within minutes we are completely surrounded. There could be around 40 elephant of all ages around us enjoying a slow breakfast. We sit in silence soaking in this incredible Heart moment with these magical creatures 🖤
I spent a number of years living in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. A magical pure space. Sights and sounds and Heart moments not easily forgotten. The Zebra is the animal emblem of Botswana, here in silhouette with a vivid blue sky background reminiscent of the nation’s flag. Zebra are iconic African animals with their cryptic camouflage stripes and haunting bray that often fills the night with tension – are the predators near?
Happy Independence Day, Beautiful Botswana 🖤💙
I have been reflecting on Heritage a lot this month. Heritage can be defined as something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor, something possessed as a result of one’s natural situation or birth or simply, tradition.
As yet another Covid-19 lockdown forces me and mine into this weird isolation and I think about how to fill my time, I have baked and cooked and begun traditional prep of Christmas a lot earlier than I normally would. This is me falling back on family heritage, tapping into inherited ritual and tradition to help me feel anchored at this time of ongoing uncertainty.
I have been teaching online for the past 6 weeks or so. When I think about the legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic and its affect on this generation I worry about what they’ve inherited. Is it okay to spend this much time “online” to learn, to work, to socialise? While I can see how under these current circumstances it is better to have the technology than not, I do wonder what the long term outcomes of this will be on the emotional wellbeing of this generation.
Probably the biggest regret I have is that I am part of a generation who has left future generations a weary and depleted planet. Not completely broken, I hope, but thinking about heritage in this way keeps me highly motivated to make a change for sustainability in whatever ways I can.
24 September is an annual celebration of South African heritage. As a South African I have been profoundly influenced by my country’s natural and cultural heritage, for good and growth.
In a hopeful step, short term and long term, I have begun preparations to return to South Africa in 2022. I am thrilled to be joining the Rise of the Matriarch Expedition – an all-female adventure across South Africa to raise awareness and funds for the plight of Mama Africa’s wildlife. The ROTM crew will engage with local communities especially children on the human-wildlife issue and distribute Wonderful Wildlife Booklets (that I developed content for). We will connect with anti-poaching groups, visit conservation groups and schools, and meet with incredible women who are doing remarkable things at a grassroots level to assist in conservation efforts.
Ecowarrior and founder of the Blue Sky Society Trust, Carla Geyser, is the expedition leader of the 2022 Rise of the Matriarch Expedition .
In 2016, she led South Africa’s first all-female conservation expedition from Southern Africa to Kenya. They drove 15 787km over 100 days through 10 countries to help stem the tide of poaching. The crew of 13 “she-roes” raised nearly R300 000 for various conservation projects, drew widespread continental attention to elephant poaching crisis, distributed 20 000 conservation educational booklets to children and provided support to 37 wildlife organisations along the way.
In September 2018 she headed out again and lead another all-female crew. This time across South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to raise awareness about the contentious human-wildlife conflict. Another very successful Rise of the Matriarch expedition.
I joined Carla on a Journey with Purpose expedition in 2019 for a boots-on-the-ground experience with Elephants Alive. I can’t wait to get back on the road with Carla in her Landy, Dora, next year. #LadyinaLandy
And so, I introduce Pelo Tales. – my Heart Art fundraiser for this expedition.
“Pelo” is heart in Setswana.
My art is an expression of the deeply creative connection I have to pure spaces, to beauty and most especially to Nature. Each painting represents a Heart Moment and so a little Pelo Tale to accompany it.
This is a series of canvases I painted during Covid-19 related lockdowns in 2020. Having to make do with what I had to hand and in the spirit of sustainability, each canvas has been recycled. Perfect in their imperfections and certainly one of a kind.
All the proceeds from the sale of my Heart Art goes towards the Rise of the Matriarch expeditions 2022. More details on the fundraising side of things coming soon.
In the meantime, I will be sharing some Pelo Tales here over the coming weeks in anticipation of wonderful adventures to come and in the spirit of sharing the heritage I am so inexpressibly grateful for 🖤
It is Meaningful May. I have been mulling over this month’s Action for Happiness calendar and contemplating “meaningful”.
There are so many things that give our lives meaning. For me as an Enneagram type 4, symbolism is very significant to me. Symbolism is attributing meaning to ideas, images, memories, words, identity, culture, belonging, sense of place and so on.
This is my charm bracelet. Here you will see symbols that represent much meaning for me…
A lioness/leopardess. That great iconic African predator. She speaks to me of Mama Africa and to my identity as a woman of Africa.
A globe. A map of the World. I love maps always have. This is about my sense of place. Feeling like a global citizen, a child of Mother Earth. My time as a Geography teacher.
A little rhino. My spirit animal. Symbol of steadiness and assurance, that all is unfolding as it should. Peace of Spirit.
A little elephant. A symbol to remind me of incredible close up encounters with these most glorious of creatures. Their wisdom, their memory, their wicked sense of humour! How charmed has my life been to have had not one but many moments with elephants!
A heart Celtic-like filigree. A nod to my Celtic roots. But more importantly this charm symbolises family for me. My deep connection to my kin.
Dragonflies intertwined. The dragonfly has been important symbol for me since childhood. Moving forward. Transformation. The little plaque on this charm reads “love transforms us”. So true.
Star Wars droids C3PO and R2D2 and next to them super cute little Grogu. These charms speak to creativity. I am drawn to fantastical story telling. The human imagination boggles. Besides being a total Star Wars geek, I also nerd out about the likes of Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Harry Potter’s Wizarding World.
A Celtic knot. Celtic mysticism and symbolism speaks to me on a spiritual level.
A dream catcher. A dreaming practice has become a very important part of my life in the past couple of years.
A Christmas angel, stars and snow flakes. My most favourite time of the year.
A little tree. Lots of symbolism here for me about nature, connectedness, belonging and living sustainably.
And just to add another layer of meaning, I took this photo of my charm bracelet laid out on top of the beautiful sleeves my precious aunt crocheted for me 💛
So much meaning and a constant reminder of how charmed my life has been. And just how much I have to be grateful for.
Life is full at the moment. In some ways I’m leading a double life. My weekdays are filled with a day job that I am very grateful for but I do not enjoy. The rest of my time is taken up immersed in my passion projects that I feel in the flow with, that I dream will lead to being able to further my purpose and be my living.
Some days it is really tough to get the balance right. Some days I find it difficult to focus on that part of my Story that matters to me most, to not get sucked into the daily grind of doing the work that gets the salary, that pays the bills.
And so, as seems a usual occurrence in my life, the universe puts messages in my way that help me navigate whatever difficulty I’m facing.
In the last couple of months there have been a lot of messages about Story. The importance of Story and Storytelling in our lives. The fact that our internal Story impacts the world around us – how we show up in society. So how do we own our Story in order to make the external impact one of hope, positivity, kindness and compassion?
It seems to me that owning our Story is an act of Radical Self-Love. What is radical self-love? Meet Sonya Renee Taylor!
Having now read Sonya’s book The Body is Not an Apology, one of the key takeaways for me was that part of owning my Story would be owning my Body. This was an incredibly confronting concept for me! Warning: this will be very challenging for anyone who has struggled with feeling “not enough” and trying to reconcile your physical place in society!
Sonya’s affirmation exercises do seem to help. I feel like I’m slowly making progress with this part of owning my story. I love this quote from Sonya about stitching a new garment…
We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal, other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment, one that fits all of humanity and nature.
Sonya Renee Taylor
I read this quote from the legendary Brené Brown a number of years ago. These days I keep it close. I have found it comforting in this journey with Story and Storytelling.
What about being a Storyteller and sharing Story externally? Well, along came this National Geographic Education course – Storytelling for Impact – so, of course, I signed up. I loved this course. I have always loved photographs and photography but this course really opened my eyes to the power of this medium to share Story.
Stories … protect us from chaos … Implicit in the extraordinary revival of storytelling is the possibility that we need stories — that they are a fundamental unit of knowledge, the foundation of memory, essential to the way we make sense of our lives: the beginning, middle and end of our personal and collective trajectories.”
Bill Buford, the former fiction editor of the New
Yorker, writes this in his essay, “The Seduction of
Story Telling”
Any photograph has multiple meanings; indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: ‘There is the surface. Now think — or rather feel, intuit — what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy
Susan Sontag, “On Photography“
The last idea I want to share about Story and Storytelling in this post centres around using this power to build awareness and promote behaviour change for some of humanity’s big social and environmental issues.
Here are a couple of academic papers looking at the place of Storytelling as part of the solution for climate change:
Storytelling is Part of the Solution to the Climate Dilemma
Transforming the Stories we tell about climate change: from Issue to Action
The latest from Project Drawdown is putting this Storytelling into action. Climate Solutions 101. This online course is for everyone – super accessible, delve in as deeply as you want. It promotes hope for the future and is packed with individuals and groups Stories of actions that any one of us can take to be part of the solution for this – the dilemma of our time.
By owning Your Story,
you own Our Story 🖤