This story begins at Rustlers Valley, when I turned thirty-one in 1992. I had been involved in ceremonial work for four or five years before drinking ayahuasca.
Those many ceremonies leading up to my introduction to ayahuasca became years of exploration and discovery. I was experiencing a world of new ideas, solutions, and teachings, many of which I had never considered possible. I put myself through many initiations and explored as many ways to access the spiritual realm as possible.
I was influenced and taught by various Sangomas, medicine women, curanderos, pajes, and shamans from different traditional cultures and teachers who have awakened the inner shaman through personal experience.
Until 1992, I practised as a professional photographer in Cape Town, South Africa. I was developing a new business, a photographic studio and darkrooms for printing high-quality black and white prints. I was also shooting regular editorials for local fashion magazines and model agencies. I loved the work and was good at it. In 1993 I was awarded six awards in the Ilford Profoto awards: two silver and four bronze.
However, it was a tricky business to maintain financially. I was barely paying the bills every month — a self-owned business with no capital and no insurance on my equipment. Then suddenly, in August 1993, I had a fire that destroyed my darkrooms and photographic studio on the slopes of Table Mountain in Oranjezicht, Cape Town. It was devastating. All my files, photographs, and negatives from years of work were destroyed.
Rustlers Valley, Maluti Mountain Foothills — the community that changed everything
In Cape Town in 1993, I experienced my first Sweat Lodge. I was in a state of remorse, moping over my recent losses. A friend told me he was holding a Sweat Lodge and that I should come and join them. I had no idea what a Sweat Lodge was. I packed my swimming trunks, a towel, and a dozen beers, as I knew no better.
Only five people were at the fire. The Sweat Lodge itself was a crude construction of bamboo holding up some old blankets, big enough for five or six people to sit around the hot stones. It was nothing like the lodges I experience today. However, it opened my mind to a new reality and significantly altered my life that day. I was named “Niyan” by the lodge-keeper, Warrick. I kept that name for thirteen years.
“It was a blanket lodge, and it opened my mind to a new reality, Sweat Lodge significantly altered my life that day.”
A few days after that first sweat lodge, I heard about a community that lived in the Maluti Mountain foothills near Lesotho in central Southern Africa, who were beginning to hold festivals and starting something called “Permaculture.” This community was experimenting with off-the-grid living and alternative lifestyles, among other things.
I didn’t know much about it, but I was drawn there and decided to attend the first Rustlers Valley Christmas Free Festival in December 1994. I had met a guy named David at a drum circle in Cape Town, and he said that he was living in this community and that I should visit sometime. He didn’t think I would follow through and was quite surprised at my sudden unannounced arrival, but we became close friends over the next few years, a kind of spiritual brotherhood. We continue to hold ceremonies together when our paths cross.
San Pedro cactus in flower — one of the plant medicines explored at Rustlers Valley
“Everything that I thought was true was shown to not be, and I learned so many things from so many different people about a different way of living.”