The Happy Hippy Living in Africa

Hi Steemians!

Hello! I'm Elizabeth the Happy Hippy - and I'm very glad to be here. Really looking forward to meeting new folk and learning new things. This is my Introduce yourself post so here goes....

I'm from the UK, left there 10 years ago to come and live in an amazing part of Africa - The wide, wonderful Karoo.

Eight hours from Cape Town, ten hours from Johannesburg it is a place of stillness, silence, heat, earth, fire and beauty. I came here to retire. <This is where you laugh!>

I had had a great career in Europe, writing and teaching and loved my core profession of psychotherapy - but Africa has always called me so finding myself at 50+ single, happy, but very burnt out, I called it quits and came 'home' to the Karoo. To help me change my life and slow down I did an advanced Yoga Teacher Training first then set up my new home.

The new home consisted of a pretty cottage and half an acre of dust! Opps - I thought. Should have listened to my mother when she talked about gardening.

One day the sun was going down and I was looking in despair at the dust I saw that I had been creating tracks through the empty garden over the previous few months! I had an inspiration - I would create a medicine garden around the weaving natural pathways. So I read a book, consulted Mrs Google and here we are now...

Life went on; I ran yoga classes, met people, made friends and began to be involved in a local social enterprise. Here we farmed and processed fish in the desert! Yep, it was the Karoo's first aquaculture farm and was part of a crazy, but brilliant job creation project. I fell in love - with social enterprise.

Something about the concept just grabs me. It's a win, win set up. Set up a business with a mission at its heart; train people, make products, sell, make a profit, use the profits to change a social situation that sucks. In the case of the fish farm it was about creating jobs for local people in an area where unemployment is the norm.

It was impossible to have a dream and seek to make it come true here - there was just nothing but the endless horizon. Beautiful - but devoid of job opportunities. The young folk were struggling.

The idea of setting up a social enterprise of my own took root right there and then.

A few years later 'Profit with Purpose' was born. Our idea was to create an Incubator Hub training local ladies and men who work in domestic positions to become artisan crafters. There is so much talent here it was easy to find people who just had magic in their fingers. We had John the palletware and welding Wizard. Deserey the Dough Queen in the bakery. Felicity the Remedy Queen with the Herbal Remedies made from the garden. Denise the Design Queen and Sueney the Sewing Queen.

You'll be hearing all about them and our social enterprise in my blog! And so my days are spent happily developing the brands with our lovely partners in preparation for the day when they each take their brand and run it as their own business. We're getting there!

And evenings..... well.... I am a retiree! So here I am with my beloved dog, Phoebe, waiting for the evening star.... Life's good.

Looking forward to hearing from you.