I spoke to a friend a few times today, where our friendship is blossoming. We work together, learn to understand our path but; above all have a very strong connection when it comes to bringing a shared vision to life regarding spirituality. She asked me to write down what is very obvious to me. I live everyday magic, because I not only grew up like that as a small child, but sank into worries and darkness as soon as I let go of this to be more acceptable to others. The so-called hard reality is an illusion. No matter how intense things seem, life is good and remains good as long as we deal with it with care and lightness and love. Every day magic is different than many people want to believe; the truth of existence. It is real, it works and there is nothing mysterious about it. I learn to lift the veils. I teach you how to lift those veils to return to the magic that you yourself are. How do I know this?

My grandmother's mother, my great-grandmother with Native American blood was one of my greatest and physically also smallest teachers, when I look back. Me and my sisters stayed with her as small children, a few times a year during our holidays. There we slept in brightly colored hammocks in an exciting village, with a real river with a protruding rock to dive from, where you walked in the morning or when the heat rose from the stones and lay thick over the village, in the afternoon, over rolling hills with children who whispered secrets to you in a language that was sometimes not entirely understandable to me. They whispered about where we had to walk carefully so as not to wake or force wild animals, how softly we had to speak on a certain part to keep ourselves safe while I was pulled back by voices when I frolicked after butterflies, iguanas, beetles or birds, separate from the group. or came back when I was sternly spoken to by my older sisters who went exploring with me. Because I, I lived there in paradise with its magical colours, incredibly beautiful animals and shapes and mystery, lights, elves, thousands of scents and creatures with whom I could lie in the grass and only be found again, fall back into my body when I had gone for a walk on a sunbeam, by a grandmother who laughingly with some concern in her voice, told me that I could not just step out of my body. The threatening story that the soul of a parrot would take my place in my body and that I would then only continue to live as a parrot, I did not like that very much but I never unlearned walking on sunbeams or floating between flowers. My primary school reports always said "ilanga was daydreaming a lot again". I came back from walking with sunbeams and only then realised that I was supposed to be in class that day. Oh yes; I walked on my toes until I had to unlearn that too... at around 10-11 years old.

Flowers and plants are my Achilles heel; the promise of a special plant in a suspicious looking van, makes me lose my sense of discrimination, dive into that van and come out again, you know. But the hassle of obscure vans is not worth it at all. It is as if reason completely betrays me as soon as I am under the spell of plants again.

My absolute passion for fruits; call it an obsession with fruit, also comes from South America. The sweetest and most aromatic fruits with colors, textures, flavor variations, that come to you from a great distance and always have more depth in flavor than you imagine in advance, makes every real fruit a complete surprise to this day. I get so incredibly happy, energetic and charged in my senses by fruit, which also includes fermented grape juice, that I am called "fruit bat" in the family.

My great grandmother had enormous bunches of fruits with nuts taken from the enormous palm trees as soon as I arrived in the village, placed me behind them with the instruction that I could eat as much of them as I could, as long as I kept the kernels for her in a nut boat; The enormous shells of bunches of palm fruits that had the natural shape of a boat. After a few times of eating, children from the village, sisters, uncles, aunts and such who helped to fulfill my task and I religiously collected the nuts and no one was allowed to leave without handing over the seeds to me, the process began.

In the cooking hut, with a roof of beautifully woven palm leaves, there was a fire in the middle, with a kind of rack above it where all the seeds were slowly heated. My great grandmother stirred the seeds from time to time, while she pointed to the fire and I had to tell her what I saw in the flames. After we had asked, I learned to see what the fire had as a message for me. We sat there together for hours, in my experience, and I chatted away, while she listened, sometimes told stories and had to laugh a lot or very occasionally cried. She cried when I told her about the woman I always saw who took me on trips or called me “little one” and explained to me in advance what would happen in the event of a big change or when I got sick and how long that would last. She cried when I described her face with her raven-black braids on either side and how she spoke and told me that that was her mother.

They taught me about putting seeds in the earth, about the silence and caution that was necessary afterwards because mother earth was pregnant and how well we took care of her until the seeds suddenly grew out of the earth like magic! They told us about mermaids and how white people dealt with them. About the ancestor who crossed the Amazon river walking on the bottom because she could hold her breath for hours. About the river and its power. The rituals at our aunt Magda's where they dripped plant juice into our eyes, very warm huts, strange smelling medicines poured down our throats because we resisted and didn't like medicines, strange tasting drinks, the tension in the air of the family coming together and us as children having to go to sleep, the smell of sweet almonds and mangoes in the morning mixed with the taste of victory to find them that had fallen on the ground during the night while we were sleeping. The joy, the enthusiasm with which we jumped out of bed to experience new adventures, or to go fishing with plants in creeks before full sunrise with aunt Magda. Fish that jumped out of the water and we were only allowed to take what we needed. The rest had to go back and fishing with the specific plant was not allowed after morning and not consecutively at the same creek. Aunt Magda with the very deep endless cave behind her house where my niece and I threw stones in and it took a very long time, a really long time before you heard anything fall. The smell of boiled herbs for tea that seemed to make the mist less cold in the morning while the animals had an orchestra with the rising sun, while you blew smoke because of the high altitude of the village and warmed up by the wood fires and drank tea from plants and herbs or waited until the cacao was traditionally boiled and spiced….

Aunt Magda with Laika; who always walked with us when she got the assignment from Aunt Magda. Walking between forest giants, mysterious rustling in bushes that kept you on your toes, where a rabbit, bird or other innocent looking animal would appear. The dew of the water that was long before the river or the creek and pointed you in the direction of the water. Laika was sociable, with a caramel-colored coat and was the only dog ​​I ever knew that fought snakes. She was so strong and smart that she more often than not walked into the yard with constrictors that she had caught and killed. Scary big snakes. Laika was known in the area for chasing and killing snakes. Laika was the first professional assassin I ever knew.

We still have to talk about the chicken that, from a few months old, sought out every bonfire and ran right through it. My grandmother's chicken that we attribute to having been an Indian fakir in a previous life and that did not want to let go of this trait.

About animals with character, harmony with nature, living and eating from what the earth gives us. respect by honoring the strongest to take each other into account, promoting the growth of the animals and how adult creatures deserve just as much respect and cannot work and live together with us as slaves without a task and castrated. The task of pets and their addition to our society.

There is still so much from the Amazon where so much wisdom is passed on, but the introduction of my life as a small child where I was allowed to live very briefly in paradise with the line of healers from which I descend, whose umbilical cords are buried in South America at their tree of life, including mine, seems to me a clear beginning of my journey together with you.