Cape Town Sculptor Angela Mac Pherson and her learning journey team has created a sculpture of the Goliath Heron that will be installed this week in the shallows of the Princess Vlei. This project is a collaboration between the Princess vlei forum and KURUfynbos, a creative FybosLIFE project, through which Angela Mac Pherson has run several eco sculpture learning journeys over the last few years.
  The temporary sculpture will stand 4 meters in the water and is constructed with galvanised mild steel, woven with Bullrush reeds from the banks of Princess Vlei and coloured with Zinc based pigments.
    Water holds the memory, and the giant sculpture of the Goliath Heron of the Princess Vlei will call on us to remember ourselves as part of interwoven living web of the Cape ecosystem and all life on earth. 
Humans have had a massive impact on the living system of Earth. We can strengthen or weaken the living web through our actions. We are now being called to consciously choose how we wish to affect it, for the future of us all.
    The Heron adventure team includes Cape Town artist Xolani Bukani and two emerging artists from the surrounding Cape Flats area, Samaa Nordien and Chaylem Swartz. Several other members of the community  have contributed to the process in different ways, including Jeanine Dekker, Delroy Chazika, Etienne de Kock, Sean Mac Pherson, Harry Kentrotas and members of the Princess Vlei Forum team. Love from many local sources has been poured into the Heron Princess.
    During the creative production Angela Mac Pherson guided the team through the creative process and they gained both practical hard skills of drawing, design and form finding, metal work and weaving as well as environmental exploration and research which embeds the Heron sculpture deeply in the place it stands and honours the local ecosystems and waterways which support it.
  

“The moment I saw it that eyes give me wisdom. Their stripes encourage me, the eye colour made me feel strong, smart and intelligent and the eyebrows give me hope and love “- Amy-Lee

I think deers are calm and chilled animals 
They keep to themselves and are not often found with other animals
The mothers are known to be very protective of their children/ calves
The are known to be the teachers when in the wild, leading the animals to food 
They are very big with very big heavy horns  - SIlindokuhle

These learners were reflecting on the experience of looking into a photograph of animal eyes in the third session of Recall the Animals/ healing spirit animal programme.
      This is the part of our Recall The animals Project, which encourages learners to recall the animals which once were found in Cape Town and at Princess Vllei, but which have been driven out by the colonial settlers and later by urbanisation. It is both a call to remember the animals, and to call them back, by making a place for them in the world.
      In this session,  learners  heard how in Nguni and Sesotho culture many clans, such as the Ndlovu clan or Dube Clan,  have totem animals that are significant to them, because of qualities of the animal, or because the animal has played an important role in the clan’s history. Clan members traditionally would protect their totem animals and ensure that they were not harmed. We spoke about how these indigenous ways of knowing and being with animals is so different from the Western and colonial way of relating to wild animals. Within a few decades of the Europeans arriving in South Africa, the wild animal population had been decimated. Yet indigenous people had lived with wild animals for thousands of years. 

Learners looked at cards with pictures of animal’s eyes on them, and were invited to choose the animal whose eyes drew them, and to write what they felt.
     The learners then selected an animal to do a mandala. It was explained that a mandala is a sacred design, representing harmony and balance, and honouring its subject. The learners then created the mandala’s with an animal of their choice, using mixed media - collage, dyes and pastels.
     In the fourth session,learners painted to tshirts depicting their ‘spirit animal’.

In the fifth session, we spoke about the rate of extinction, and how wild animals are being driven out of existence by human activity. Learners read quotes by Native American thinkers framing animals as our ‘older brothers’ with much to teach us.. We spoke about the idea of animals as teachers, and what they could teach humans about how to live in the world. 
     Learners engaged in a guided meditation to invite a message from their spirit animal. They then worked in groups to craft messages from the animals to humanity. This was the message of the Goliath Heron
 Everything takes time so have patience and find balance. It took us time to find this message. It shows that everything takes time so if you have dream never give up because it will come true, but not now. 
      The learners then made paper mache masks, which they finished by painting a week later. 
These will be worn at the parade and celebration on 10 October

‘I felt spiritually connected to the kudu when I held the horns on my head.’ 

This was one of the comments by Lotus High nature guardians taking part in a 6 week programme to connect with the healing power of animals.

The programme is part of the Recall The animals Project. This project encourages learners to recall the animals which once were found in Cape Town and at Princess Vllei, but which were driven out by the colonial settlers and later by urbanisation. It is both a call to remember the animals, and to recall them - call them back, but making a place for them in the world.

The project with with Lotus Learners programme aimed to raise awareness of the threat of extinction: to foster a strong connection to these animals, and to learn from the ancestors who lived in kinship with wild animals before colonisation.

The first two sessions were facilitated by cultural practitioners Shihaam Domingo and Bradley van Sitters, or Danap Bradlox as the learners called him. The Session opened with a circle around the fire.  Danab Bradlox  taught the learners a song in the Nama language - Sida ge ra tsoatsoa/ "We are beginning" and they circled the fire, singing and clapping hands

Learners were invited to wash their hands, and taste the tea of lemon pelargonium and buchu which Shihaam had prepared. Shihaam explained the healing properties and cultural significance  of the fynbos plants  that were in the water,  such as bruin salie and kapok bos.. Learners were urged to be silent as they took these offerings, and to open themselves to what the tea was doing in their bodies. 
     The learners gathered in a circle around the animal skins and artefacts which Bradlox and Shihaam had gathered. Bradlox described how early humans lived in close community with the animals, and learnt everything they knew about edible and medicinal plants from them. He described the animals which used to be present at Princess Vlei, and pointed out landmarks which remembered the animals, such as the two elephants of Constantiaberg and Lion’s head. He said that the animals had followed the eland. 
    Amongst the artefacts were skins, horns and skulls from eland, zebra, kudu and other antelope; a tortoise shell and an ostrich egg. He provided the Khoi names of all the animals, and explained the symbolic significance and use of these by the Khoi.
     The learners handled the horns and the skulls. They tried on the skins. It was clear in the way their bearing changed that something shifted in them when they wore these ancestral skins, they were stepping into an older way of being when humans were more connected with each other and the earth. ‘I felt so different when I wore  the skins…I felt like a king,’ Commented one learner. 
       Shihaam described  the deep relationship between  the Khoi people and plants, and passed around a balm made from healing fynbos plants. The learners were invited to rub the balm on themselves or on each other.

A week later, the learners again gathered to drink tea, and listen to the stories featuring animals  that Bradlox had been told by his grandmother. He explained how his grandmother would use these stories to teach him lessons for life.
    He then introduced the theme of  rock art. He explained that the oldest art in the world was found in South Africa, painted by the San people. He explained the difference between the San art, which depicted more wild animals such as the eland, and used very fine brush strokes from brushes made from animal fur; and Khoi art, which depicted more domestic animals such as the sheep, and featured more marks made by fingers and geometric shapes and spirals. Learners looked at examples of rock art, and Bradlox explained the significance of some of the drawings, in particular the eland which was a highly spiritually significant animal much valued by the San and the Khoi, and frequently depicted in rock art. 
      He also pointed out the Therianthrope figures with human bodies and animal heads. He explained how this indicated a shamanistic state when the shamans transcended their own bodies and merged with the bodies of the animals. Sometimes the eland would be painted with a paint using eland blood. He explained that shamans entered this higher, altered state through dancing. 

Learners walked down to the exterior wall of the Jolly Carp. There were told that the original San and Khoi rock painters would have used coloured clays, ash and blood,  but they would be using acrylic paints, with a similar pallet to the rock art. They were encouraged to paint in the spirit of honouring the animal, not to make pretty pictures, or to worry about whether they were ‘good artists’ or not. Learners took different panels and honoured the animals on their panels, including baboons, elephants, eland, blue buck, leopards, and lions. 
    While they were painting, two green praying mantises jumped onto the wall. This was seen as a good omen, because the mantis was a very spiritually significant animal to the Khoi and San,
   This programme was made possible by Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust Managed by Nedbank Private Wealth and the City Cape Town’s  Ars and Culture Grant in Aid.