From Istanbul to Johannesburg

Red Earth (also known as laterite) from Johannesburg, South Africa (original photo by Corina Fratila)

Dear Community,

It is Monday, which means: NEWSLETTER DAY!

And before anyone gets any ideas, I would like to reassure Emma D. that Saturday's invitation to join us for a Romanian șezătoare this Thursday was most certainly NOT this week's newsletter.

Emma has already made her position abundantly clear, in no uncertain terms: "That better not count as your email for the week or I will be sorely disappointed!!"

Message received, Emma. Loud and clear. The newsletter is alive and well, and its regular Monday appointment with you remains firmly intact. 😂

I wouldn't DREAM of letting you down!

And speaking of dear readers' responses, I have received a particularly thought provoking answer from Cristina Z., regarding the question I asked in my last newsletter: "How do we know when we are looking at genuine knowledge and when we are looking at cultural conditioning?"

Here are Cristina's words, (in translation): "To answer your question in bold, in my opinion, there is no such thing as 'genuine knowledge,' only conditioning of one kind or another, because none of us can position ourselves outside a culture, a trend, or the spirit of the times. Those who can are enlightened."

Dear Cristina, first of all, thank you for engaging with my question. I am so grateful for your participation. What you are saying is essentially that we are all products of cultural, historical and intellectual environments, or that no one gets to stand outside the system and observe reality from a completely neutral position.

I find some great value in  what you are saying and I also want to challenge your conclusion! The fact that all knowledge is mediated by conditioning doesn't mean all knowledge is equally valid, because we can recognize our biases, test our assumptions, examine the evidence and revise our understanding. Otherwise, we fall into relativism: if everything is conditioning- how do we distinguish a well-supported belief from a delusion?  And who decides that people who supposedly transcend conditioning are enlightened?

We are all  born into cultures, languages, belief systems, historical circumstances and inherited narratives. Of course. We don't get to choose the lens through which we first encounter the world. But does that mean there is nothing beyond the lens?

The Earth exists whether we have a story about it or not. The body exists. Water, fire, air, gravity, birth death, pain, pleasure. We encounter these realities directly, even if our minds subsequently interpret, categorize and make stories about everything.

And this brings us to Gnosis, which is particularly relevant to our conversation. In the broad sense of the term, gnosis means direct, experiential knowing as distinct from knowledge acquired through external authority, doctrine or intellectual instruction. In the historical Gnostic traditions, this was often understood as a transformative knowledge of the Divine and of one's true nature. It wasn't just a collection of correct ideas. It was an experience that changed the knower. One important qualification: direct experience isn't automatically infallible. Our bodies can misinterpret, our intuitions can be wrong, and spiritual experiences can be shaped by expectation. But that doesn't make direct knowing meaningless.

I think the key here is to attempt to eliminate all-or-nothing thinking  (thank you, Sydney Ashland, my dear friend, the first person to ever introduce me to this concept!)

In other words! We need to distinguish between the limits of knowing and the impossibility of knowing.  It looks  to me that they are not the same thing.

Thank you again, Cristina Z. for verbalizing such an important point of view.

Emma D. Said: "I (Emma) loved this! What a fun read! I laughed out loud when you said you particularly enjoy prayer you cannot understand! My response to your topic in question: I think that that is the beauty of a multigenerational society. We don’t know, so the next generation gets to learn from the mistakes of ours. And I guess in hopes that each generation gets better over time… is this happening? I could not say yes with confidence; but we can hope! Looking forward to reading more about your trip next week! Happy napping!"

Love your answer, Emma, and very happy to make you laugh out loud. And, I wonder whether each generation becomes wiser, or simply develops a different set of blind spots! Happy napping to you, too, dear Emma.

It's been hard to move on to the next section. As you all know by now, I am experiencing significant transformation in my personal life, and sitting down and writing about anything except the impeding DIVORCE from my husband of 18 years has been difficult. Trying to feel all the feels- and in this process all sorts of stories come alive (anything but stories from my travels!).

However, Scheherezade wants to keep her sultan's attention and I want to keep my audience's, so I will keep going.

I believe I left you in Istanbul the last time we talked. The flight to Johannesburg (or Joburg, as the locals call it) was already a long one, at just over 10 hours, and was made even longer by a five-hour delay caused by severe weather.

Water, it seems, played a rather prominent role in my Istanbul experience. First, there was the hammam, which was a life-changing experience. For those paying attention, it felt less like a bath and more like a ritual cleansing, a baptism of sorts. And then, as I was leaving Istanbul, water made a rather dramatic reappearance, this time falling from the sky in such abundance and with such force that it brought airport operations to a near standstill. Apparently, Istanbul wasn't quite done washing me clean!

In any case, I landed safely in Joburg. Having heard a few horror stories about safety in the city, I had arranged an airport transfer to my hotel. My driver, a very loquacious man from Pretoria, answered my many curious questions with great enthusiasm.

He spoke English and Afrikaans fluently, but his native language was Sesotho, one of South Africa's 11 official languages. (And here's a fun fact: most South Africans speak several languages. Nearly everyone I met spoke at least four, often different ethnic languages. Citizens can even choose to represent themselves in court in any of the country's official languages.)

Another interesting fact that I discovered, thanks to my chatty driver:  South African law allows a man to have up to five wives, provided he obtains court approval for each additional marriage. Women, however, are not currently allowed to have multiple husbands.

When I asked my driver about the logic behind this arrangement, he didn't hesitate. "It would never be possible for a woman to have five husbands. They would fight like bulls!" he explained. He then invoked nature as evidence: "Look at elephants! When there's more than one male in a herd, they either leave or are driven away. It never works. Males always fight. Why should humans be any different?" (You can only imagine how much I enjoyed hearing humans being compared to other species to make a point about human relationships. I didn't have the presence of mind to introduce him to the bonobos, those fascinating, female-dominated great apes sometimes nicknamed the "Make Love, Not War" apes. Their societies are remarkably peaceful, and they use sexual behavior for social bonding. (Although, recently, their reputation for nonviolence has been challenged by observations of female bonobos killing a male.) Nor did I mention the many species known for lifelong monogamy, including gray wolves, black vultures, albatrosses, seahorses, bald eagles, and prairie voles, amongst many others.)

Moving on. The local, favorite staple food in Johannesburg (and all of South Africa, according to my driver) is pap. It is similar to the Romanian mǎmǎligǎ and it is a traditional dish made from maize meal and water. In Afrikaans the word "pap" means "porridge", but it can be prepared in many ways, ranging from soft and creamy to firm and crumbly. Pap is commonly served along steak, lamb chops, grilled chicken, Boerewors (a traditional farmer's sausage made from beef, pork, lamb or goat seasoned with coriander, nutmeg and cloves) and chakalaka (spicy vegetable and bean relish). (I had the great pleasure of being invited to an ethnic South African meal during one of my travels- see picture above- and I can attest it is a very enjoyable experience, hoping that one day will get to write all about it).

Joburg was nothing short of gorgeous. It turns out (unbeknownst  to me that mid- to-late October is the absolute best time to visit! because it is spring in the Southern Hemisphere, when jacaranda trees are in bloom and the air is heavy with jasmine). Like lavender clouds above the city, the jacaranda trees are a vision to behold. The streets covered in fallen purple/lavender jacaranda flowers made for a grand entrance to this dangerous, mysterious, incredibly beautiful city, with all its contradictions of wealth, poverty and social injustice.

My hotel (the excellent and  impeccably maintained Parkwood) was in a relatively safe area, and my wonderfully welcoming  host, Jean Paul (a Congolese immigrant to South Africa, also speaker of many languages,) assured me it was perfectly safe to  walk to the mall during the day. I promptly started walking, admiring the exotic botany and of course, taking pictures of the flowers, plants, soil etc. (by the way, the Earth is red in Joburg and other places I visited in South Africa and the reason for that is because the soil is rich in iron and aluminum and oxidizes to create a rusty color. The name of this particular kind of soil is laterite. Another fun fact: accumulated atmospheric dust can cause the skies and environment to have an odd red tinge!). 

This is just to give you a very brief idea of how gorgeous this place is. Red earth, red-tinged skies, purple jacaranda trees lined-streets. For me, it was love at first sight.

As I was walking, feeling very much in love, ecstatic with colors, aromas, senses intoxicated, trying to capture some of this incredible city's essence on my phone, a woman stops me abruptly and informs me that what I'm doing is unsafe and I'd better put the phone away. Apparently, the poverty is so extreme in Joburg that you can have your phone snatched up from your hand with no notice whatsoever.  Lesson learned. Phone away!

Before I close this newsletter, which seems to have acquired a life of its own by now,  I want to tell you about Patricia, who guided me through parts of my journey. I found her through the Origins website, the conference/festival I attended in Kromdraai and the main reason for my trip.

Patricia is an entrepreneur and business owner (I'll explain the difference another time, if you're interested!), but above all, a remarkable woman deeply committed to the development of her community. She has managed to create something quite extraordinary, and rather unusual.

To understand why, I need to introduce you to something I knew about only from reading and documentaries: the squatter camps, or shanty towns, around Johannesburg. Seeing them in person was quite a different experience.

These settlements, known locally in South Africa as plakkerskampe (from the Afrikaans word for squatter camps), consist of makeshift homes built from whatever materials are available, often wood, mud, and corrugated iron. They typically lack basic infrastructure: proper sanitation, reliable access to clean water, electricity, and drainage. Many develop rapidly on vacant or public land near cities, where people can find work without having to pay for transportation.

And, in the interest of looking at the whole picture, some journalists and environmental writers have pointed out that these communities can also have surprisingly low environmental footprints: residents often reuse and recycle materials, and many rely on walking, bicycles, rickshaws, or shared taxis for transportation.

Back to Patricia. For several years now, drawing on the deep relationships of trust she has built within these communities, she has organized month-long immersion experiences for teenagers (ages 12–18) from more affluent parts of the world, including Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK.

The young people spend about 30 days living alongside local families in the shanty towns. They share meals, learn the local songs and dances, and become part of everyday community life. By the end of the month, they don't want to leave. Eventually, of course, they do, but they return home with a profoundly different understanding of the world, of inequality, and of what it means to belong to a community.

And perhaps that's what I found most moving about Patricia's work: she isn't simply bringing young people face to face with poverty. She's creating opportunities for human connection across worlds that might otherwise never meet. And in doing so, she gives both sides something far more valuable than a lesson: the experience of seeing one another, sharing one another's lives, and discovering just how much we have in common.

I wanted to leave you with that story of hope and with a little reminder that even in a world so divided, people like Patricia are building bridges, unseen, unknown, quiet. 

Until next week!

P.S. It looks like the Thursday gathering or şezǎtoare is shaping into quite an interesting crowd! If you haven't signed up yet, you can do so here: https://cute-semifreddo-c2cdc1.netlify.app

 Also, upon popular request, I am planning on re-introducing my Rude Romanian Reset offering soon! Keep your eyes peeled. 

With love, (a tiny sprinkle of) rage, and reverence, Your disorganized, recovering people-pleaser, community-dreamer, hope-filled activist in the making, deep-sleeper, clean compliment giver and receiver, not-a-true-exhibitionist, 21-day resetter, recovering prostitute, courageous by practice, trusting by skill, always with my head in the clouds, but loving my feet on the ground, soul worker (!), inner voice listener, pleasure list maker, Aquarium sleepover organizer, beginner-level meditator, wabi-sabi contemplator, self-fascinated observer, giving-up-machismo supporter, hot soup-slurper, enthusiastic and tired traveler, death by Yellowjackets antidote and higher consciousness dreamer, aspiring human rights warrior, zielschmerz-stricken, nap lover, mostly Romanian wine-drinker, Persephone-adjacent, always asking-for-permission, psychedelic explorer and guide, Hammam-obsessed, Scheherazade in-the-making, collective worshipping devotee, sezatoare organizer and Joburg lover, 

Corina