Common ground

Second day in Berg en Dal. Today we visited Mujekonde, and then took off for Kapasi Kele. Els Beerten, Florence Filton, Karin Lachmising, Stanley Slijngaard (Sombra) and myself: Marieke Visser.

We met Alwin Lienga, also known as Aloe, one of the elders in the village. When he was fourteen, he had to leave his house, his home, his grounds ... And with him many others, because of the Afobaka Lake, the reservoir.

We talk about home. Home is where the earth is, the heart is where the earth is.

Florence Filton: "We have common ground that we walk on".

I feel good:it feels right that we all are here at this moment in time. We are not displaced, we are not displaced, we are not dis-pla-ha-ced ... At least not now.

Still, there is a sad vibration: the history of the verhoisikondre, the transmigration villages. Also the ambiguous recent history of the Berg en Dal resort. Familymembers of ancestors buried at Berg en Dal feel ignord and mistreated by the company who developed the resort. The history of slavery.

However, sadness, discussion, misunderstanding: they seem to fertilize the ground, the common ground we walk on.