Diversifying Ocean Spaces
Hello friends!
Our blog is late but never not thinking about sharing written space with you!
I hope you had an awesome weekend and a positive start to the week!
South Africa celebrated Heritage day last week which is a reminder of the beautiful and different cultures and religions that make South Africa. I’ve often mentioned the hard history that South Africa comes from, and is still living through in parts, though apartheid has been abolished, the fruit of its work still lives on not only systemically but the physical pain of the disenfranchised.
I’ve spent time in Cape Town recently and for all the beauty and love she is, I carry a heaviness for her particular kind of hard.
Forced removals from the old regime means in Johannesburg it looks like… low income areas and high income areas yes but there are no physical natural monumental structures that sing of a particular beauty that once belonged to one and because removals, a standing reminder and pain point of what used to be, like in Cape Town.
A mother told of how she sat on a bench one day and a teen told of how she’d grown up here and this was her home in glee, she looked across in a rage that she had never felt before... this teen was speaking of a home that was forcefully removed from her family, and in the teens telling was a rising anger.
Why am I sharing this?
Because beaches have history
Because beaches are political
Because proximity to the beach doesn’t equate to access to it
So in the telling of who is water people and why it looks as it does today, we have a responsibility to acknowledge history and the part it played, and the part it plays today as the fruits of an unjust system, and most importantly a reminder that, if we are to change the narrative, we will need to be intentional and consistent in our efforts, nothing less will yield the world we want to see,
Mass love,
Xx
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The past week we started the Instagram Lives again, and my first guest was Thando Mazomba, she is a phenomenal water human who is also a Marine Biologist, Oceanographer and researcher, have a listen here.
Wishing you a stunning week and a reminder to subscribe to our mailing list to get our monthly Newsletter!
Xx