About

I was born in Johannesburg in 1963.

What became my life’s work in ceremony only truly began in Cape Town in 1992 and 1993.

I arrived in Rustlers Valley in December 1994, thirty years old, camping there as a guest for the Christmas festival. When the festival ended and everyone else went home, I stayed, and to justify my place in the community I was given the title “master of ceremonies” and one job: keep the fires burning. Make sure there was always wood. Make sure the valley, cold as it could get, always had a place to gather around the fire. I lived there for twenty years.

In 2004 I was initiated as a Sangoma. The initiation came through dreams and ceremony. There are many kinds of Sangomas: herbalists, maternity specialists, those who work with the spirits, prophets who read the future. I was initiated because the traditional healers recognized my work as spiritual work with the ancestors, and they wanted me protected within the African lineage. My physical initiation was in Zululand.

The fire has always been at the centre. Over the years my role grew into sound journey, sweat lodge, drum circles, ayahuasca ceremony, vision quest, and sacred dance. I have never called myself a Shaman but was often referred to as one by my peers.

I have sat in ceremony with plant medicines many hundreds of times, sometimes as a participant, and in the past fifteen years as facilitator of the ceremony.

I’m writing these stories down as they actually happened. Thirty-five years of this needs to be put somewhere, and I’m gathering my tribe together again, the friends who shared those years with me.

Right now, I live simply in a small place in Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica, with all the basic necessities for life: a small kitchen, a modest workshop, not much like-minded community around me, making an effort to study Spanish. It is a time of solitude for me, a time of reflection while I observe what is going on in the world. I have found a new purpose in a fast-changing chapter of my life. Soon I will move to a place by the river near my son, where we will work together. My dog Aquila keeps me company.