Brave Rock Girls at the Vlei

Post by Emma Oliver

It’s a perfect summer morning at the Princess Vei Park. No wind. Soft clouds. The floating princess and her reflection stand as one in the water and sky. Audrey and Sune, facilitators for Brave Rock Girls, arrive with 9 girls. The group energy is glum and heavy. No one has had breakfast and several have had little sleep with their year-end Prom happening last night. So we start with bread and juice. At the braai spots next to us a Pentecostal church group is gathering for their year-end celebration. Kettles are on the fire and chairs being placed for the seniors in the group. Beyond them, on the platform, the Saturday morning yoga class is taking place.

My brief from Audrey is that they want to learn more about fynbos. We walk along the shoreline and I tell the girls to ask questions about what they see and notice. First question. Why is that plant growing there and not there? She is pointing to clumps of sour fig (carpobrotus edulis). It’s a good question. Some of the sour fig look healthy with thick green stems and others look scraggy, shrivelling and heat stressed. We dive into everything about what might be going on for these plants. We bite on the stems, tasting the bitter antiseptic sap. The girls try the sap on their skin, feeling how it soothes. They break open a fruit, the fig, and experience that unique fynbos sweet and sour taste.
   It was a morning to touch, taste, smell, reflect and then draw. We were nature journalling. What did we notice? What did we see? What did we feel and hear? What was surprising? What made us wonder? We reflected on what we were seeing and how the experience might have been for those living many generations before us. We hardly moved from the one spot. Around us there was Bruinsalie (salvia Africana-lutea), wild rosemary or kapokbossie (eriocephalus), Wildedagga (leonotis leonurus) and of course water hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes). Each plant is there with its own fascinating story, its personality, its many qualities to be explored. We could have stayed long.
    We ended the morning sitting at the table by the braai, painting our drawings, relaxing and unwinding . The girls shared what they hoped for in the holidays ahead. For all of them it was a wish for peace.