Angela and Willamina - Day 373
An interesting chat with Angela, and Willamina is the star in Cicely's story
A chillax day full of interesting conversations; it started in the morning with a delightful chat with Angela on Skype. We connected a couple of years ago, one of those people who is so easy to chat with, together with lots of laughter. Angela got in touch with me recently as she read my book and wanted to explore more about the Three Principles. How lovely. I am always thrilled to chat about this. We shared our various experiences that pointed to our extraordinary natural ability to easily deal with circumstances when we are out of our personal thinking. Having come across the Three Principles recently, Angela could see how this changes the way she was training and coaching people. I shared how I had to rewrite all pages of my website and change how I ran my workshops. We had a good laugh at this downside! It is lovely to chat about this understanding with a kindred spirit, and I know that through her awareness, she will make more waves, enabling people to live a more relaxed, peaceful and joyful life. What a lovely start to the morning.
In the afternoon, Tim and I drove to the beach at the Strand. White fine sand greeted us, and we had a lovely stroll along the seashore, watching surfers, kids playing, people sunbathing. The tide started to come in quickly, so we walked along the pavement, stopping for a coffee and returned to the car. It’s nice to get the wind in our hair, not that Tim has much of that, but his moustache was flapping in the breeze. It’s good to blow the cobwebs out.
In the evening we went to Cicely’s for dinner. It is so kind of her to feed us each evening, and we have such wonderful chats. Her father sounded like a fascinating man. He studied medicine and then became a professor of physiology. He used to work with animals and one time came across an orphaned elephant calf. He took it home and called it Willamina as it had a floppy ear. After a while, as the elephant was growing, he knew, sadly, that she needed to move on. A man from Chipperfield Circus got in touch with him to buy the elephant, and after Cicely’s Dad put him through his paces and demonstrated that he loved and cared for Elephants, he let Willamina go. Thirty years on, her father was in Knysna helping with a film about the Knysna elephants and discovered that the film crew had imported elephants to be used. He walked up to meet the elephants when suddenly one charged up to him excitedly – it was Willamina! She had recognised him immediately. What a lovely story. They say Elephants have fantastic memories.
Later in the evening, I shared with Cicely how we had seen the tin huts in Khayelitsha the day before, and I found the number of them quite shocking. She shared, as our friend Sue has, that the country has opened its borders to countries and thousands of people are coming into South Africa. Interestingly after researching this, the United Kingdom has also had its fair share of net immigrants in recent years. In 2015 the net total was 3.08 per 1,000 in the UK and 3.02 per 1,000 in South Africa. In 2010, UK was far more, with 6.57 compared to 2.50. (based on Knoema’s World Database).
Looking into the migration situation further, it seems that the net number of people migrating is predicted to be growing. The dilemma is that ever-growing number of people leaving the country are taking much-needed wealth and skills whereas the many people arriving into the country have no money, poor education, and little hope to obtain any jobs. This puts a significant burden on the economy and infrastructure; with just 13% of people paying tax. As Sue informed us, there is an additional issue that many of the poor have many children, and this is enlarging the economic and social problems here, let alone the xenophobic attacks which are widespread, the crime which is rife and all the corruption that is talked about. Oh dear, a lot to do. I will continue to live in my beautiful bubble of peace, love and joy and sprinkle this on everyone I meet.