Earth Forum - Laingsburg Election Day

Election day! Earth Forum day! Finally, our chance to work with the Earth Forum process and have a dialogue with people who would not usually be familiar with processes like this.

Our host's daughter, Yolanda complained about the noise and disruptions in Laingsburg and reckoned it was the worst day of the year to be in the little Karoo town. To our ears, this disruption was no more than the daily traffic past our homes in Cape Town. Cars cruised down the streets with party flags flying and music pumping. Although we had only arrived in the town the day before, it was clear that there were more people in town today, especially more people from outlying farms who came into town to vote.

We chose to experiment and do two different types of Earth Forums on this day and the flexibility really paid off.

First, in the morning, we set up the table in a busy part of town and welcomed passers-by to joins us for an open conversation if they wished to. Through the morning we sat around the table with many different people from an eleven year-old and his dad who love to walk the dry Karoo river beds to a group of teenagers who were soaking up the day's festivities on the side of the road. The concerns about the town ranged from the increasing drug and alcohol abuse, the increasing difficulty to farm in the area, the future of tourism in the town and the youth moving away from the town.

Later that day we had a more structured dialogue, set up in the very river that flooded the town thirty years ago. This was a longer process with invited participants which allowed all of us to work more deeply with our questions.

Clickety clack clickety clack, onwards to Joburg.