How do you even begin to share a conservation journey of almost 100 years? A journey that, by the year 2026 will grant us access to the centenary club. An adventure of heart, mind, earth, body, spirit, sentient beings, rivers, leopards, rhinos, and everything in between. An experience that meant that sometimes we got lost or made mistakes. Sometimes we found new territories and untouched potential. A transition from a family business, to a corporate expansion then back to a family business. It relies on the essence of kinship to keep people connected to a common purpose. To accelerate the awakening of humanity in partnership with nature.
How do you explain the level of gratitude to the many teachers, guides, staff, experts. Those who have lent their time, knowledge and passion to this incredible adventure?
How do you explain, using words, something that can only really be felt? And in fact, exists in the wordless space of experience?
This is the challenge that lies before us. Perhaps we should start this conservation journey at the very beginning?
A Conservation Journey Intention set in 2015
For many, the beginning of 2020 has been the start to another year. But for the Londolozi Family, it has been so much more. For us, this year in particular, has been a beacon to which we have been striving towards since 2015 when the concept of The 2020 Vision was born. Therefore, this vision set the clear intention of a living journey that we needed to take towards a sustainable Futuristic African Village. One rooted in the principles of the flywheels of sustainability which include heartware, hardware, heritage and permaculture.
Developing New Systems for Living was at the centre of our conservation journey, allowing for each member of the Londolozi Family to play their part within our Futuristic African Village. We as the Londolozi Family have committed to best-practice technologies and systems (known to us as hardware) from solar power production to waste processing, food gardens, refusing and recycling as well as many other technologies to ensure that we are leaders in creating sustainable village living.
Hardware
- Solar Farm
- Water Resource Management
- Electric Land Rovers
- Food Gardens and Integrity
- Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot
But, sustainability is nothing without the human heart, and that’s where the term heartware was born.
Heartware is not about bricks, money or computers. Rather, it is about you, the individual. It’s therefore about creating internal engagement and discipline. And also about how we live together. Above all, it’s about each one of us becoming servant leaders to take Londolozi, South Africa and our planet into the future.
Buying the technology to build the solar farm or to recycle the water was the simple part. Following this we needed to spread consciousness in an infectious way to 280 people in the Londolozi Family to start doing the little things. For example, switching off their lights and air conditioners, to think of ways to consume less, to change their diet, essentially encourage each individual to live sustainably with each other and the planet. We’re not interested in telling people how to live, rather we allow them to find their own way to their own way of being, with the hope that this will ripple out into the world.
Heartware
- Resource Awareness
- Decorative plants to all be indigenous
- Sustainability Whatsapp group to share ideas
- Pressure on supplies to delivery plastic free
- The production of eco-bricks
- Office paper is “earth kind” and fully recyclable
- Community litter pickups and planting of trees
- Sustainability courses
- And so much more..
Over the past 5 years, we have witnessed a fundamental shift in the behaviour of not only our family members but also our guests who have come to visit us. Subsequently following their trip, someone referred to their annual trip to Londolozi as a pilgrimage.
A time out from their busy, everyday life, to recharge, reconnect and be a part of a living model for change. What a beautiful way to describe this Londolozi experience.
Pilgrimage/ˈpɪlɡrɪmɪdʒ/verb. A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about the self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, after which the pilgrim returns to their daily life.
As we are sure you have now come to realise, the chapters of Londolozi are deep and wide and far too layered to described in one blog.
Therefore we invite you to explore 90 years distilled into four chapters that represent Londolozi’s learnings. Explore the Londolozi Living model, founded in Village life and based on New Systems for Living. Which has been pioneering the restoration movement in the belief that the restoration of the planet can only come out of a profound shift in human consciousness…
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” ~ Margaret Mead
Londolozi is not a game lodge, it’s a conservation journey, a platform for advocacy of the restoration movement and the new consciousness.
What if there is a place that inspires a profound desire in people to live in deeper connections with each other and the natural world?
There is a place… It’s called Londolozi… It’s time to make the pilgrimage…
Join our global tribe:
As a Londolozi Ripple Fund supporter you join a global tribe of people who hold the belief that the restoration of the planet can only come out of a profound shift in human consciousness.
We have established a Londolozi Ripple Fund Impact site where you can follow regular updates of projects and donations as they unfold.
For more information or if you would like to make a donation and start your own ripple effect, please reach out to us on ripple@londolozi.co.za
