Origins Project
A journey to our origins with Jon Young, Nicole Apelian, and the Naro Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert, Botswana.
The Origins Project, lead by Jon Young and Nicole Apelian, is your opportunity to visit the communities of the Naro Bushmen in Botswana this Spring (four trips in March – April 2013). Participants will enter into a reciprocally transformative experience and conversation with the Naro Bushmen, who continue to live in ways very close to the ways of their ancestors for the past tens ofthousands of years. 2012 marks our third year visiting with the Naro, and our friendships and questions continue to deepen. Participants enjoy the once in a lifetime opportunity to accompany the Naro Bushmen through their daily lives as hunter gatherers, as families, and as a community. We so look forward this year to welcoming more families to share this experience with us.
Register or Learn More about how you can be a part of the experience.
Week One: The Origins of Culture, Mentoring & Healing (March 26th – April 1st)
Week Two: Hearing, Sensing and Connecting through the Language of Birds & Animals (April 2nd – April 8th)
Week Three: The Art of Holistic Tracking & Awareness–Reading the Landscape and Telling Its Stories (April 9th – April 15th)
Week Four: Animal Tracking and Communication Experience in the Kalahari & Khwai River Delta (April 18th – April 27th)
Cost Overview: The cost to reserve your spot as part of this amazing journey is outlined below.*
- 50% deposit due upon registration
- Full payment due January 15, 2012
Option One: One Week (Available weeks 1, 2 or 3) ~$8500
Option Two: Two consecutive weeks ~ $16,000
Option Three: The 10-day journey with Anna Breytenbach, who joins us a co-leader. This journey starts in the Kalahari Desert with the Bushmen and ends in Botswana’s Okavango Delta along the River Khwai ~ $12,580
Payment Support: Do not let the tuition cost stop you from participating in this journey of a lifetime. We are here to help you understand your payment options.
*Scholarships available for people involved in Nature Education and Connection
Please Contact Us with any questions, and ask more about how others have worked with their communities to obtain sponsorship to participate in this incredible project.
About Family:
This year is the third year we have been invited back to be a part of this amazing community. This year, we have committed to bringing our own families along, and invite you to bring yours as well. Weeks 1, 2 and 3 are open to adults and families with children of all ages. The 10-day journey is open to adults and families with children 12 and over.
Children under 16 are half-price if sleeping in a room with their parents.
The Origins Project and you…
Every day will be a unique journey. We will do a lot of food gathering – every day in a different area so that we can find and experience a bigger variety. The Bushmen will teach and guide us the same way they do with their own children. They teach their children with acting and demonstration while out in the bush. The ladies will do the food gathering and show us medicines. The men will put up traps, track, make rope, and make fire. The late afternoon is often a time to play games which often extend into the night when they sing and dance around the fire and perhaps do some trance dancing and healing.
Activities may include the following:
• walking with Bushmen women gathering foods
• medicinal uses of plants and herbs
• hunting with men, checking on and setting snares
• the art of tracking with Jon and the Bushmen
• tracking to pursue game
• storytelling
• spending time around fire while singing, trance dancing and more
We put emphasis on the laid-back life of the hunter gatherer! There is no particular order for any activities.
For this journey we completely put ourselves into the mind set of a hunter gatherer as we spend time with those that consider themselves to be the “First people”. We benefit from the extensive knowledge that these Bushmen have accumulated over the centuries of living in the harshest of environments in Africa. With the help of experienced guides and leaders we spend our days sharing the life of our Naro friends.
This visit requires open minds and hearts to a timeless way of life. The trip is during a time of abundance of veldfoods and game in the area, making the pace of foraging easier for novices to keep up with. This Bushmen community accepts you as part of their village very quickly. They are great teachers, imparting every bit of knowledge they offer with the wisdom survival.
Our guides help us fit into a daily routine. Most days start with warming ourselves by the fire, while plans for the day are discussed. Women journey almost daily to find veldfoods, the men may decide to go for a hunt or to check numerous small game snares they leave out during the night.
Midday we typically rest to avoid the heat of the day while the late afternoon is often a time to play games. This mood extends into the night when our teachers sing and dance around the fire, celebrating, trance dancing and healing. At this point, any participant has the option to remain with them for the night, sleeping in a traditional hut that you construct yourself. Sharing of food is very important and you will be encouraged to sample many foods they collect.
Week One: The Origins of Culture, Mentoring & Healing (March 26th – April 1st)
The natural history of connection is easily felt by people when it’s working, but it is not well-studied or recognized by modern society. What exactly is connection? How does it happen? What are its benefits? What is mentoring? What is culture? How does it work? These and many other questions will guide our inquiry and deep experience with our hosts in the Kalahari.
Our week will begin in Maun, Botswana, with a gathering of participants to review the goals of the week and to acclimate to our new time zone, climate, and landscape. We will depart the next morning for our destination in the Kalahari to join with our hosts, whose lodge is in close proximity to the Naro community. This segment of the journey will take us deep into the tracking of what builds strong connections: Mentoring and culture. What restores connection when it weakens and helps to build back this important power for resilience and love? What are the healing practices that are used to bring this about? How does the culture work with these delicate threads? Participants will gain a deeper appreciation and ability to work with the threads of mentoring, culture and healing as a social practice. Participants from previous years have expressed that this experience infuses a deep sense of understanding our role with respect to one another, nature and culture. This week has produced very powerful experiences for people who work as mentors of nature connection and culture repair.
Week Two: Hearing, Sensing and Connecting through the Language of Birds & Animals (April 2nd to April 8th)
In the search for best practices for connection, Jon Young has come to believe that bird language is one of the most powerfully effective tools. Jon has personally mentored hundreds of people in the bird language skills of his indigenous lineage elders-trainers. This almost forgotten practice, both art and science, provides an incredible work out for our human design.
Nothing brings forward the attributes of deep health and connection as fast as the meditative state known as the “quiet mind.” The quiet mind is best accessed by activating our original design: be aware and connect with the communication network that surrounds us in our natural surroundings—or risk the consequences.
Nobody has greater awareness of bird language than the living practitioners of this old system of connection: hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer nomads like the Naro Bushmen thrive in a landscapes that they share with deadly predators, snakes, and other dangers. They listen for the birds to tell them where danger lies, and where they can find food. The birds may even tell them about coming changes to the weather, or other, less easily defined disturbances and transitions.
The Naro Bushman, along with expert safari guide and friend Alwyn Myburgh, have MUCH to offer in art of bird language . Jon will be teaching the basic skills and practicing with folks each day. We will spend our days with the Bushmen and Alwyn, experiencing the application of these ancient powerful skills in the field. At night, we’ll share our stories of the day around the fire, and hear more wisdom from the lineage(s) of learning gathered there beneath the Kalahari stars. Come join us for a rare and powerful opportunity to learn bird language from some of the world’s best teachers!
Week Three: The Art of Holistic Tracking & Awareness–Reading the Landscape and Telling Its Stories (April 9th – April 15th)
The Power of the Storyteller is one of the core design elements of talent, creativity, expression, leadership, genius and even healing. When the traditional skill of storytelling is combined with keen observation of the landscape and the signs of the other forms of life that inhabit it, the talent of holistic tracking emerges. The traditional tracker combines his or her observations of disturbances to baseline conditions with the ability to “read” the story that the disturbances are telling to learn what has transpired on the land. At its highest level, this process requires the activation of all our sensing and connective systems. We are called to use our eyes in many more ways than we might even know about… the modern experience does not offer a comparison. Our ears are called to be calibrated to refined degrees to hear dimensions of sounds, shapes and sensations. The whole body dances in the story of the day to capture the essence of the learning–our proprioception and vestibular instincts sing with the fullness of fulfillment of the deepest instinct to fully participate in the process of expression. Our tactile senses and olfactory roots awaken with ancient memory and potential. Our dreams deepen. Our minds relive days in full sensory experience. Our emotions awaken as a connective sense. The taste buds come to the edge of their seats and look with anticipation over the communication occurring there. Our meals come alive. We dance the Great Dance of tracking.
We will learn from true masters of this ancient art: The Naro Bushman. Each day we will be led through routines for developing our own holistic tracking powers, and will walk out on the land in the company of the Naro. Join Jon Young, Nicole Apelian, Alwyn Myburgh and the amazingly skilled and authentic trackers among the Naro Bushman for an unforgettable and life-changing immersion in the art and science of tracking. Hunting, gathering by day, stories by the fire at night. Exercises to fill in the spaces in between and lots of great meals and fun to be had!
Week Four: Animal Tracking and Communication Experience in the Kalahari & Khwai River Delta (April 18th – April 27th)
This ten day program will be led by animal communication expert Anna Breytenbach, tracking & bird language expert Jon Young, big-cat expert, tracker and wilderness guide Nicole Apelian, and experienced wilderness guide, tracker, and master naturalist Alwyn Myburgh. The group will work closely with the Naro community for the first week of the expedition, before heading off to the Khwai River wilderness to experience other wildlife and other habitats.
This will be a culminating experience bringing together elements from all the Origins Projects subject areas gathered for the three prior weeks by the leadership team. We expect another amazing experience with the Naro in a hunting and gathering setting, and will settle into powerful exercises developed from the team’s repertoire of experiential training and mentoring expertise. Jon Young and Anna Breytenbach are featured in a documentary (in production) examining the indigenous roots of interspecies communication abilities and examining current expressions of this work with everything from pets to wildlife in wild settings. Come join Jon and Anna for an intimate and powerful week learning from the Bushmen, the wildlife, and these wonderfully experienced and talented guides.
Read more about the Background of this project and the Biographies people who will be your guides on your journey.
