56. PEAS ON EARTH

Sign at a local Restaurant

That is where we are heading next, to Peas on Earth. http://www.peasonearth.co.za  The owner is a couple called Niki and Colin and they have a small Organic farm. I am ecstatic to be going back to “farming”. 

The farm is about 30 km outside of Kei Mouth, so it is not a major move; just down the road and Kei Mouth will still be our “local” town.  I do like Kei Mouth, it is an eccentric and off the wall kind of place full of characters of note, but I am a farm girl by heart.

The harsh reality is that the small towns are ghost towns out of season. I have to say that I do see myself as a bit of an expert on living in small towns.  You either come here to retire, with money already made or you have an existing business, like a Food Zone or the Bottle Store. It is real hard to actually find work and the population is too small to really sustain any kind of year round business. It is a beautiful place with lovely weather and long beaches and lush bushes and fresh air and all those things, but it can become hell in paradise.

Paradise lost?

I also applied for a position as Organizational Assistant at a place called Zuvuya/Impendle http://www.impendle-ecotourism.org.za   (Organic farm/Self sustainable farm and Eco tourism). I made it past the first round, filled in a questionnaire, that was two days ago and I haven’t heard from them since. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

It takes a lot of organizing the keep things running smooth; basically a lot of these communities are also businesses. It takes commitment and lots of planning to keep things on track. It also needs funding and a Perma culture garden. I say perma culture because it is a whole system of self sustainability, not just a matter of growing food for profit.

Peas on Earth and Impendle are both small Green Businesses. I have spoken to Colin and he knows that if the Zuvuya happens I will be going, simply because they also have the Ecotourism side, but for now, it is me and the Peas.

We are moving the end of the month.

55. WHERE TO NOW?

Vertigo

Stairway to heaven?

Coral tree, with the Kei rive mouth in the background

Stop this roller coaster I want to get off! I told you in a previous article (Forty Eight) that I started meditating again and that it always (3^rd time now) creates havoc in this world. Everything just explodes, all at the same time. The big bloody bang is not over yet.   

I see a plan, but I have to go places and talk to a few people first before I can share that here. I have taken the photo, now I must develop it, so to speak.

Putting yourself first is not selfish.  Stop the self sacrifice, it gets you nowhere.  How can you help others it you cannot even help yourself? I am busy giving myself a motivational speech, trying to convince myself. Sometimes you have to let go of things.

This whole idea or starting the Medicinal herb garden with the Doctor is just not happening, for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because I think I have created enough gardens for other people at my expense, next time I will do it for payment or for myself.

Paradise lost..

Being on the brink of disaster (financially) does bring up some issues, you do think about things in a different way. The trick is not to fall into a space of fear and lie there and panic.

I am sure a plate of food and a place to sleep must be a basic human right, it is a basic human need! Talk is cheap and there are all these beautiful words about human rights.  Now we are so happy and proud, look we have a piece of paper it says we have rights, but what does it really mean in the real world. Just because something exists in theory, does not automatically mean it is being applied in practice. Even if you know your basic right, how exactly does that put a roof over my head? There is this commission that has to decide whether your rights have been violated, by the time they have decided, you could have died from exposure.

In the meantime I can really put some energy into some of my ideas about making money from the internet. My main interest in this is the fact that payment is normally in Dollars or sometimes Pounds, so even if it does not bring in much, with the exchange rate it is worth quite a bit in Rand value. It is a lot of work and learning in the beginning, but once it is all up and running it does not take up your whole day and can create income, without creating slavery.  I am brainstorming a lot about this at the moment.

Kei Mouth Coffe Shop, they have an Organic market every Saturday

We have decided to move at the end of the month, actually we haven’t decided that, we will have to, cannot afford this rent any longer.  There goes my idea with the Internet business, because I will more than likely not have a good internet connection where we are going next, that is now if my plans all work out. Again I cannot share details with you yet, because I have to go and talk to some people first.  I am rather excited about my whole plan. Let us see how things develop, I need to get out of town, even towns are too big for me and I need a garden! This will be the start of a whole new chapter in green living!

54. CYCLONES AND PSYCHOLOGY

a Bit of an old photo, CLOSE ENCOUNTER, taken a few years ago near Vaalwater in Limpopo,

people do not believe me, but I really took this photo.

Reading this article about the Tornado’s that just ripped through the bible belt, it is really starting to look like god is angry with the bible belt, or is it just me, but there seem to be constant tornado’s and floods and things. 

My big mouth, better not be to judgmental, right now right here where I am sitting I am looking at (hopefully) the tail end of a really nasty Cyclone coming down the coast. Then if you look on http://www.sat24.com/za  (this will probably look very different by the time you watch, because it is live, but such a cool toy, wanted to share) you see that there is another pretty mean looking set of fluffy white stuff coming in from the other direction, just missing Cape Town and heading this way. If these two collide above our head … let us not go there.

Enough about the weather, but if you never hear from me again, I probably moved on to another dimension, with the help of cyclone and friends.

To help people integrate into normal society.  That is the answer a Psychologist gave recently, when asked why they give people so many pills, hectic drugs that actually kill a lot of people. My question is - if you have to drug people into a stupor to make them integrate with society, doesn’t that tell you something is actually wrong with your “normal” society? I think so.

Then we have all these designer diseases, seriously there was no such thing as ADHD when I was a child, I am a sixties model and I fit the ADHD profile perfect, but lucky for me it was just called hyperactive then, so I never got drugged, just wasn’t allowed near the sugar.  And then more and more children started finding school and life in general beyond boring and dumb and not stimulating at all and then instead of changing the system, we force people to adapt to outdated system, by giving people pills to keep them mellow and mild. This sounds like an insane business. It sounds like the depression of evolution.

Psychology is also the only “science” based on no scientific fact at all. It’s all theory and we get drugged based of theory, so that we can fit into a designer society.

And what exactly is depression? We all feel down at times, but instead of dealing with the reasons, we stick a plaster over it (take a pill), and then sometimes live just really sucks, are you depressed if you have a lot of reason to be depressed? Lets say your car broke down, your cat died, the bathroom flooded and you got fired, I think you have good reason to feel like chewing through your own wrists, not so? So I think that depression should be called "hate my boring life disease", nothing like the above disasters happened to you, but you hate live, people have to deal with boring lives and hateful jobs just to survive, but that will not be a nice thing to say and besides how are doctors going to get rich if they tell you that truth? Again this tells me there is something very wrong with our society, again we have to drug people, and why because they have miserable lives. 

One of the reasons for this sad state of affairs is the amount of indoctrination that comes with the expensive education. People are also tough to think in a certain way and see themselves in a certain light. Education and intelligence is also not the same thing, you do need some brain cells to absorb and apply information, but that is a very small part of the big equation of intelligence. Read about a lady psychologist that died the other day, she was obsessed with this man and tried to climb down his chimney to get into his house, she got stuck and died from exposure.

Now I am not saying all people it the above mentioned field of study are crazy and brainwashed, like anywhere and everything else, you do find the good ones with real intent.

53. GETTING IT TOGETHER

The road to Kentani

The fact is, I am not writing much at the moment simply because I am busy with this new project and it is turning out to be quite a mission getting everything together. Mulch for one thing, a Gardening Service Business in town cut the grass on the pavement and parks for the Municipality. Eva, the lady from the gardening services told me that there is also something going on at the local School, apparently and Overseas NGO setting up a garden there, will have to go and check it out. 


Anyway, Eva was telling me that they use to burn the grass as garden refuse and suddenly people are fighting over it, there is also a Nursery nearby that want a lot. She will give me some from next weeks cuttings. I also having problems finding old newspaper, apparently they all go back for recycling now. All these are really very positive signs, it means people are starting to re-use stuff and in a good way.

The problem is that I am finding it very difficult just to get things of the ground and I am  not getting any help, as promised.

I also went with Tim to Kentani in the Transkei. He is busy with a food Forest there, on some tribal land.

New food forest with houses in the back

Tea break at Kentani

52. THE RENEGADES

Sunrise from our Balcony

The big bang has broken its own back and I am back on track. No idea where that came from, but it sounds good to me.

Sometimes something perceived to be real bad can turn out to be something real good, maybe the only bad thing is the labels we put on things, our perceptions. 

I am not a big fan of Doctors as a rule, sad as it is, a lot of them are nothing more that legal drug dealers, with a chip on the shoulder, obviously that is just my opinion, based on my experiences. We met our local Doctor the other day. He is not your conventional doctor.

I was looking for a place or a project to start in the form of green gardening. Nico, this is the doctor’s name and this is what I will call him from here on. We ended up having to pay him a visit the other day. His rooms are in and old two room schoolhouse, but the property is rather big (with a sea view). He works a lot with the natural healers and Sonoma’s in the area, as I said he is not your conventional doctor.

Vervet Monkey up a tree

The problem with the popularity of natural medicine (they are also much cheaper than your Pharmaceuticals) is the fact that they are being stripped in nature, not by die healer, but by people mindlessly harvesting to sell to healers and nobody is planting. Some of these plants stand a real change of extinction.

Our main aim will be to create a food forest, with a lot of these plants, like the African Potato. Obviously we will be doing it the green way; we are also planning a labyrinth for the more formal veggie garden, perma style.

This is all just in theory at the moment, let us see how thing develop in reality.

A town full of renegade's, that is how somebody described Kei Mouth the other day and I agree.