Category: restoration

  • 25 images of transition in brazil

    I spent two and a half months working alongside various initiatives that were part of a larger Transition Brasilândia network while in São Paulo, Brazil. Brasilândia is located in the North East of the city, and a 2 hour and multiple bus ride away from the centre of São Paulo.…

  • decolonising in practice- post on brainstorm

    decolonising in practice- post on brainstorm

    This experiment to me represents knowledge revival in two senses. Reviving my grandmother’s knowledge: she herself couldn’t tell me how she processed maize in this way, being bodily gone from this world; but at least I know that she did. In a second sense, this is knowledge rebirth – using…

  • where are those songs?

    ‘Where are those songs’ is a poem by Micere Githae Mugo (1972) that I like and find inspirational especially in light of a quest for memory and recovery of once remembered things. It starts off a bit despondent, the narrator is seeking songs and memories only to find them lost-…

  • why make one?

    “Why make one when you can buy one? Why bother with all this wood-hammer business, Wouldn’t it be easier to go to the shop and buy one?!” My host brother in Brazil, Dimas, and I made a shoe rack from pieces of discarded wood he found at a dump on…

  • on resilience

    In another reflection piece from Cape Town, I wrote about resilience in cities- the inspiration was a day when electricity was out in Langa, a black township where we lived for a few weeks. But now that load shedding– scheduled periods when electricity is out in different parts of the…

  • bartering for sustainability

    “But bartering has been around, even if only on a micro-level for a while too. In my travels on a fellowship studying forms of engagement with environmental issues in low-income urban areas, I encountered this sharing- what I call a ‘culture of exchange’- in various forms. It was in the…

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