The Seva Safari

"Seva" (Hindi) 'self-less service', to work for the good of others. "Safari" (Swahili). To travel: move, see, observe. Begun as an an attempt to document my experience as a traveller and then volunteer in Kenya, this blog has evolved into a record of my wanderings and 'wonderings', inspired by both the present and the recent past. I'm a traveller, but also a dancer, singer, artist, yogi, environmentalist and child therapist. Born in Australia, with African roots. I'm drawn towards slow travel and slow living. Travelling minimally: hitch-hiking, cycling, walking, camping, foraging and making, wherever I can. Making art is a way for me to deeply see and connect with the places and experiences I encounter when I travel.

[nicolabeatrix]

Are we about to experience the REAL cost of food?

When we got to NSW a couple of weeks ago, we thought about maybe checking out some different communities and farms, helping out here and there and learning stuff, so I updated my HelpX profile (similar to WWOOFing) and sent a few messages out to a couple of different Co-ops and Eco-villages. I was pretty skeptical about anyone being willing to take us on what with COVID19 and all and us coming from Victoria a ‘declared COVID Hotspot’ (shhhhhh! don't tell!).

Over the next day or so I received some replies but, surprisingly even got a few messages from people I hadn't contacted. They were reaching out to say that our profile looked great and they'd love us to come and help them out with their harvest, planting or shearing season, etc. etc. At first I was pretty chuffed! How cool is that? Dan and I must have such great skills and just be so amazing that people are actively SEEKING us out! 

And then, over the next couple of days the messages just kept trickling in, from all over the state, even from 100s of kms away. Soon it was a flood, so many messages, so many requests! What is going on? Why are we so popular? Are we really that great?And then I realised..... Nope. It's probably NOT personal. I'm probably NOT actually that great. (As much as I'd like to think so haha).

With bans on international tourists coming in, severely limited international migration and so many backpackers who were planning to be here for their year of "Work N Travel" either cutting their stay short or simply not coming at all, looks like a heap of farmers and homesteaders are pretty stuck. Where is all the cheap labour going to come from? It makes me realise just how frighteningly dependent our food system is on free or cheap labour from cash-strapped backpackers or new migrants desperate for some cash under the table, a roof over their heads and the promise of a second year visa. Who's going to bring in the harvest in the sweltering heat for just a couple of dollars an hour now?

I wonder if some of us freshly unemployed Australians will be taking up farm work to fill the gap...? (Somehow I doubt it!). And even if so, I wonder how much the cost of food will be once employers are forced to pay Australian workers a decent minimum wage. I suspect that what we think is the cost of food has actually been 'artificially' low for a very long time, and we might be about to see the REAL cost of food. Uh oh.

[nicolabeatrix]

I have heard.... I have heard, That there are dolphins now, Raising their breath in the blue canals of Venice.

I have heard, That the skies of Wuhan have never been so clear and blue, As long as anyone can remember, And the birdsong never so abundant.

I have heard, That a rare falcon in Ireland, Thought long extinct, Has been venturing across the clear skies, for the first time in 250 years.

I have heard, That the air is so clean now, That the glistening Himalayan mountains can be seen, Even from Northern India, Over 200 kilometres away.

And whilst we might feel that we have given up our freedom, That we are suffering in this, We can also choose to see that, As we human animals are choosing, For once, To retreat to our own burrows, nests and caves, In doing so, we are surrendering our freedom to all of the Earth's countless other creatures, And allowing them instead, The luxury of fearlessly leaving theirs.

April 2020. Written during the COVID19 Lockdown.

[nicolabeatrix]

"Self Storage" Dec 2019 Imagine if... we could literally put our "selves" in storage? Hide away the ones we're not using right now. Pack them away in neat little boxes, in case we might need them again at some later date. The beach babe... too cold atm, I'll bring her out in Feb The nature girl..... hmmm, maybe the weekend? The business-woman...oh yes, keep her on the shelf, there's a meeting on Tuesday. The cranky one.... oh, pack her away, save her for the next round of PMS. ;) The thinker - The dreamer - - The cook - The planner - The artist - The gardener......... too many boxes! Too many selves! Too much storage required. One body and brain not enough. Need some self storage. Ah.

(A watercolour inspired by moving house a few months ago. Definitely way too many boxes.)

[nicolabeatrix]

Kata Tjuta rock formations. Northern Territory Australia Sept 2018

[nicolabeatrix]

‘Colonial Tasmania’ Maria Island, Tasmania, Australia. Jan 2018. A belated reflection from a hiking trip on Maria Island off the coast of Tasmania in January. As I hiked through Maria, I passed rusted old ploughs, deserted farmsteads and expanses of cleared grassy plains littered with the decades-old calcified bones of farm animals, tucked away amongst dense gum forest. The attraction, on Maria, is it’s colonial history. It’s a popular tourist destination which draws thousands of visitors interested in scenic walks and quaint historical buildings. It’s beginning, in colonial history, is as a convict outpost, a ‘prison island’ so-to-speak, which was later converted into a farming colony and then abandoned.  And yet, the Puthikwilayti people - part of the larger Oyster Bay clan group - had lived on, cared for and managed the land for thousands and thousands of years before this. Until “settlement” of course. What most people don’t know, and tourists don’t see, is that the settlement of Tasmania, or “Van Diemen’s Land” was one of the most violent of all Australia’s history, and it’s genocide most effective. Few Aboriginal Tasmanian clans continue to survive.

So I wondered, as I explored the crumbling silos and eerie, deserted farmhouses, admiring the rusted relics and remnants of cobbled tracks, how much of this “history” was really built upon the graves of Aboriginal people. What happened to them? Where did they go? And why is this part of the story so conveniently discarded, left unspoken beside the very much colonial story that is told of this place?

[nicolabeatrix]

“Coconuts and jackie jackies” July, 2018 Melbourne, Australia. A personal reflection inspired by a plenary panel at the Students of Sustainability Conference in Melbourne, depicting the pain caused by “lateral violence” - in the form of malicious words, accusations of inauthenticity or of betrayal of culture - that may sometimes emerge amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups. This is often as a result of complex historical and social factors relating to colonisation and oppression. See Lateral Violence for more info.

[nicolabeatrix]

“Kinship ties” Melbourne, Australia July 2018.

Impression from hearing speakers from the ‘Grandmothers Against Removals’ group present at Students of Sustainability Conference. (Grandmothers Against Removal is a group of grandmas from various Australian Indigenous groups who formed to fight the continual removal of Aboriginal children from their parents, families and community, and the shockingly high incarceration rates of young Aboriginal people in Australia.)

[nicolabeatrix]

There is a tree it stands it breathes. It births, it holds, it shelters. This tree, it breathes

There is a road that will be faster, longer, wider, better, cheaper, thicker, stronger

Why breathe when you can drive Why grieve when you can drive faster work harder pump fumes live faster more jobs less life more money dead culture

dig your sacredness under the molten tarmac.

these trees, they breathe Why breathe when you can drive

(A poem and artwork created in response to the proposed demolition of 260 trees in order to make way for the new Western Highway being built in country Victoria, Australia. The trees, including an 800 year old sacred birthing tree, have strong cultural and spiritual significance for Djap Wurrung people who have been the traditional custodians of this area for thousands of years. Such incredibly deep history, story and culture is being erased for the sake of a strip of tarmac that could easily run a different course.)

[nicolabeatrix]

Victoria, Australia. January, 2018.

Home-cooked lemon yoghurt fig cake with figs and lemons foraged from local neighbourhood trees and ‘rescued’ yoghurt. A delicious slow food summer treat.

[nicolabeatrix]

January 2018, Tasmania. Back to earth. Slow travel. Slow food.

It's been so gorgeous to get out of Melbourne town this summer and spend some time in country Victoria and Tasmania, getting out in the bush and reconnecting with real, local food, slowing down, and making things by hand.

I've loved harvesting and drying fresh lavender and chamomile tea - picking and bundling the flowers by hand - and whipping up rhubarb and strawberry sauce, plucked fresh from the garden. 

I feel such deep and sweet contentment, wandering along the rivulet in Hobart and picking fresh wild plums, and slowly, gently crafting flax grass into baskets amidst the sounds of kookaburras and black cockatoos out in the bush. 

Picking wild native cherries and wild blackberries from the side of the road whilst waiting for a hitch, they've never tasted sweeter.

It’s a lush life.

[nicolabeatrix]

Cracked earth.

Western Desert, Namibia. February 2017

[nicolabeatrix]

The morning swim.... A ritual. A prayer. A ceremony. (Reflecting on the significance of the ocean on a visit with my sister on the north-east Australian coast)

[nicolabeatrix]

Oh, my heart, it has holes in it.

It is a sponge. And the misery seeps in.

The horror stories The fears The darkness - thoughts of death The blank stares, the blood-shot eyes The nervous tapping feet The bleeding wrists The bruises The tears, pouring down a young child's face. Even the simple, quiet, slumped sadness of a person who has given in to hopelessness. All of it.

Each morning, I tried to paint my heart with steel. So I would not feel - too much.

But there are holes in it. Holes. And the misery gets in.

(Reflecting on my recent 2 month's working in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health unit of a hospital.... which I loved, but it was so emotionally draining. Self compassion is so important!)

[nicolabeatrix]

“Lay Bare Your Skills” Cape Town, South Africa February 2017

Every morning on the side of the road leading over the mountain towards the centre of Cape Town, there’s always a long row of men, some standing, some crouching, most in blue overalls, waiting for work.

And in front of each man, there is a set of tools laid out neatly on the ground. “Here’s what I can do”, they say. “Here are all the skills I can offer you”, they say, speaking with the symbolism of wood and metal.

....So what if, every morning, the world demanded that you lay down a set of symbols of what you had to give to it? To lay bare your skills, arranged neatly on a square of dirt.

What have I even got to give the world, I wonder? Not much that seems as tangible as a set of tools.

I have ears, to listen deeply with.

I have a heart, to feel love.

I have paint-brushes, to show you what I see.

I have lips, to speak what I know.

….

 The kind of tools you can’t quite carry in a box.

[nicolabeatrix]

Soussusvlei Dunes, South-Western Nambia. Feb 2017. The deep red hills of the southern desert. Dunes that are as old, so very very old, and yet as impermanent as ever. Shifting grain by grain, second by second.

This is where the journey ends, my friends. Cape Town, and home, is calling.

[nicolabeatrix]

‘Little Germany’. Swakopmund Namibia. January 2017.

Swakopmund is weird.

It’s like a slice of little Germany wedged between miles and miles of unending desert and then suddenly, the beach. Old German style architecture. Brötchen, Brezel and Apfelstrudel. Coffee and Cake. Desert and salt.

But then, most post-colonial places tend to have a touch of the absurd. They are places full of anomalies and juxtapositions. When the colonizers recede, the inhabitants are left with strangely inappropriate architecture, unpalatable food and a language that belongs to no-one. And then, often they’re left sifting through the meagre shreds of the culture that used to hold that place.

[nicolabeatrix]

Shelters. North-West Namibia.

Out here in the desert, there isn’t a whole lot. Mostly just a whole lot of emptiness actually. So if you’re trying to make some shade, you’ve sort of got to use anything you’ve got.

Even cans. Well why not? Necessity is indeed the mother of invention!