Sihamba Sifunda is a community within a community of Re-Imagined Learning Community. We are parents, children, healers and creators on an unschooling journey, learning through travelling, based between Johannesburg and Mpumalanga at the Lebombo mountains. 15 mins away from the Swaziland, Oshoek border.
As we are telling our story we are seeking ancient knowledge about who we are as AbaNtu, learning our ways, skills, healing, herbs and rituals. We also visits sacred sites that connects us to Mother Earth through our past. We are a homestead that provides a safe space of learning for without pressure for families and individuals seeking a community that lives the natural and sustainable ways of living. Finding ways of going back to self by listening and allowing nature and spirit to continue to guide us as we grow and help guide our star children to their great purpose in this life while maintaining a healthy relationship with self as a individual and for people around us.
In 2023, June, after the South African Ecoversities Gathering in Cape Town. From that beautiful week experience with the amazing humans from Ecoversities. SIHAMBA SIFUNDA was born when I realised that there was a great need for us to travel to indigenous villages around world, starting with our local villages, if we were to find the type of learnings that I was looking for my children and I could learn from all the different types of skills.
After we could not fundraise for the Thailand Yatra, that for me was a sign coming from our ancestors telling us to start building a community at home of like minded families like us who are unschooling and homeschooling. So we headed to the Lebombo mountains in Mpumalanga where I already had land that I had not work on. This is where we started with our learning through travelling.
We started to explore the village close to our land which is about 40mins walk from our land. This is when we started learning about natural building, brick making, fencing the land, learnt about the different types of building soils, went on mountain hike to find water source. This we did for 3 months then we went back to the city, Johannesburg. These became our two weeks get away camps and we opened an invitation to other families who wanted change from the systematic way of living and learning. Our camps became a learning and exploring learning journeys.
In the two weeks we open for families to spend time learning with us, one week is about learning to build, learning to plant and learning about the plenty healing herbs and food foraging. The second week is dedicated to exploring the beautiful, huge Mpumalanga. We visit Inzalo YeLanga ( the place of birth of the sun) the oldest pyramid, the oldest mountains, sacred waterfalls, the giant footprint, nature reserves, Sudwala cave and ancient walking routes. As we continue to come to our home by the mountains, we learning more about the different seasons and the goodness that each season brings.
We hold ReKoNekt Family’ camps in September, since September is our afrikan New Years celebration on the spring equinox and we have our ENTABENI Family camp in December, both last for 2 weeks. Our main source of learning and support comes from the elders and the people of our village.
We have become part of the locals. We exchange important information about life in the city and the village. We get involved when it’s harvesting and planting seasons. SIHAMBA SIFUNDA also helps the youth in the village on how to go about finding jobs, internships and learnerships. We have balance ourselves with knowledge from both worlds and merge them together to learn more about the life balance and how to live with no pressure from both worlds. Learning to deal with all our emotional challenges and identifying self amongst others without being influenced by what others thing who we should be. Reconnecting families to each other so they can help fine their purpose and manage their goals.
