Back to South Africa

Trip Start Jan 10, 2006

Trip End Jun 02, 2006

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Flag of South Africa Pretoria, South Africa
Saturday, January 28, 2006

Yesterday we cleaned up at Charles' house and said farewell to him while he was taking a morning bath. We drove south and crossed the Botswana/South African border easily.

We were in the Gauteng province in little time from the border. Gauteng is a sprawling megalopolis that includes Pretoria and Johannesburg and supposedly handles 60% of the continent's cash flows. The whole region/city is built on mineral wealth.

We stopped at Pretoria's botanical gardens on our way in and met up with a brother named Paul, who Frank had met in Malawi on his first trip and who teaches permaculture and plant medicine making.

The gardens were lovely

A Learning Circle

. We had a picnic. Then it started puoring rain. We headed on to Flo's house (actually his parents' house. His is a cob/strawbale hybrid under construction in their front yard.) We spent the night there and prepared for today's workshop.

Today about 20 locals came out to Flo's for a one-day plant food/medicine workshop. I was pleased to have an unexpected chance to practice facilitating, putting in an eight-minute diddy on using wild mushrooms as food and medicine. Frank's weed walk really perked people up, and we had everyone tasting seaweed, sprouts, kimchi and various greens, teas, and tinctures. Crosby (I'll meet him again later.) made a great lunch. It was defintely a successful exchange all around.

We finally made it off in the direction of Rustler's Valley as the sun was just about to set. We rolled in and crashed late in a small stone barn on the side of a polo field that is now used as a primary school and village gathering venue.

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