The Earth Gives Back:
Young woman takes eco-training to South Africa
By Stephanie Hiller

Mary Moore, Dimpho Siphoro, and Emily Chavez during Dimpho's visit to Northern California in 2004 (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hiller)

"For years I've always said you can't heal the world one by one, you've got to get to the source of the problem," said Mary Moore, 70, a lifelong activist who initiated the protests against the Bohemian Grove elite encampment held here every year, "but I feel I've done more bringing Dimpho here than in all those years of protests."

She could hardly have picked a better "one" than Dimpho Siphoro.

Dimpho, now 26, grew up under apartheid in Soweto, one of the black townships in South Africa, and she knows what poverty and hatred are all about. Yet she is exploding with energy and enthusiasm for empowering the African people with appropriate technologies that are based on their own indigenous traditions.

This summer, her third trip to the states, she was awarded an internship to study at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland, run by Real Goods, where she was happy to find others from many different countries who share her vision of sustainability. "It has been the most wonderful time of my life," she told me in an interview. "Growing our own food, working with the soil… at the end of the day, the earth gives back."

Her goal is to start an ecocenter in her township, where young people and foreign travelers can obtain information about permaculture, natural building, solar, and other innovative technologies that sustain, rather than deplete, our natural resources.

Dimpho and her brother have already started, with the formation of a youth organization called Ubuntu, to educate young people through theatrical presentations AIDS education. Ubuntu – the word means "humanity" -- has also started a community garden at a local school.

Mary Moore, aided and assisted by her network of west county activists, provided airfare and hosted Dimpho at her Camp Meeker home during her three month stay as she has done on Dimpho's prior trips. Previously she has traveled with her brother, but due to a death in the family, Tehobo was unable to come.

After the internship
Dimpho spent a week learning more about solar from Ralph Pisciotta in Willits. Then she resumed her hectic pace of presentations and visits. She talked at the Rural Alliance, who awarded her $500 to buy a pump for the community garden, at high schools, and at a meeting of Alliance for Democracy in Fort Bragg. She helped Alice Kibwaa with a benefit to build an AIDS clinic in Kenya that was held at the Community Baptist Church in Santa Rosa. She was interviewed by Kris Welch on KPFA and Dawn Pillsbury of Sonoma West. She traveled to San Quentin's Death Row to visit Dennis Mayfield Brewer, a talented African artist whom Dimpho had met in 1999. Mary Moore's daughter Diane Pope has been making copies of his prints on her computer for sale.

At a talk she delivered in Bodega Bay, Dimpho spoke of the way apartheid continues to operate in South Africa, and how so many South Africans have become convinced that the white way – and particularly the American way – is the best. "Because white people keep getting richer, people think you have to be like them. If you don't look like an American, you're no good. The media is all about Americans so they lose their esteem for their own culture."

The revolt against apartheid began when the Boer government stopped the schools from teaching classes in the native language. "The language, that's the culture," said Siphoro, and people are forgetting their own language now as well.

We are living a lie," she said. "We are not a rainbow nation. We are still segregated." Gaited communities in the cities require an ID. "What the difference from the passes we had to carry during apartheid," Siphoro asks.

What Siphoro is taking back from America this time is the alternative to the mass consumption model displayed on television. Building houses of straw bale and mud, for example – that's the way they have always built houses in South Africa. And you can build straw bale houses so quickly, Dimpho says -- her Solar Living group built a granny unit in Sebastopol in only one week.

It's going to be a hard sell, to convince people that their own native technologies are the most appropriate for their country, and that's why Siphoro needs to provide films and Internet access at her eco-center, so South Africans can see young people in many countries applying these useful technologies.

But if anyone can persuade them, the dimpled Dimpho with her ready smile and no-nonsense attitude can do it. But she needs some seed money. She has raised more than $2000 so far. If you can help her get funding, please contact her at ubuntuinsoweto@yahoo.com.