A Mothers request, for Beauty.

My Father says I was born on a day when the Cape earned her name as ‘Cape of Storms’. Today is such a day. An intimidating storm is working her way across the land. This is also my cue to turn inward for annual reflection. To attentively consolidate what has emerged. Well friends, I can say sincerely that I could not have planned this year even if I had tried! A year ago, I was saying goodbye to my friends and a life that I loved in Muizenberg. With no plan but an irrefutable call to work with women in the rural village of McGregor. 

To sit here today surrounded by goats milk soaps, decanting massage oils and scheduling harvest trips brings me to tears of awe. A school of beauty had never occurred to my logical mind. She revealed herself to me with every act of trust and a lot of surrender! Beauty School is not about me. Yet anyone who has borne witness to my personal life, ancestral healing journey and incessant campaign for beauty as the most needed medicine of our times, recognises Beauty School as indistinguishable from my essence. I insist on beauty. Beauty has saved my life, brought me back to life, and strengthened me to face life. I know beauty through my Mother, and all my Grandmothers who very practically know the answer to every threshold moment starts with water and flowers.  

I include my paternal Grandmothers in this campaign for beauty. My great-grandmother Christina Agulhas was a loved medicine woman, midwife and inyanga in eCumakala. Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape. My Father says her stoep looked like a queue outside a government clinic on any given day. There were always people in various stages of diagnoses, healing and recovery. She was known for her gift with children's health. Her grandchildren were her nurses and medicine couriers; trained to help with the tending of the sick, and to collect roots and plants. 

In my maternal lineage, plant medicine is more of a practical way of life. Everybody seems to have a bit of the knowledge and there’s an inclusive sharing of antidotes, dreams and stories within the daily hum-drum that makes my intellectual mind a bit dizzy sometimes. My body likes this way of living though where nobody flinches as salt is thrown over shoulders to ward off evil, libations are poured without naming it. The art of storytelling runs strong here. Poets, writers and musicians exist and thrive in the guise of ‘teachers’. They talk to plants and refer to the little animals as ‘kleinmensies’  - small people. My Mother doesn’t understand why I need altars and ‘funny things’ like ancestral cloths. She says I can just go to nature. A practical medicine.  

I’ve come to know Beauty as a profoundly practical, earth based medicine. Go to nature. Clean up. Go to the land. Walk. Sit. Talk. Let the Big Mother do her work. There’s not much need for dialogue or facilitated intervention when one lives in this way. She is the original teacher, and it is in her honour that this school of Beauty is born. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am deeply grateful for the mentorship I’ve received especially in elemental practices. My assimilated education tends towards dialogic intervention. And if there’s one thing that I learn consistently here is that words, and intellectual facilitation techniques fall flat at the face of generational systemic injustice. Every initiation, training, constellation and mentorship finds its way through a very practical, embodied and action oriented approach. This is how we came to make Beauty products. 

On visiting, and then again on returning to live in McGregor young women would randomly follow me around to chat. Some of it was about needing money, but I felt also a call for love articulated through one girl who from the depth of tik addiction asked me through excitable tears ‘Auntie, Auntie, wanne gaan ons iets doen?’ / Auntie, Auntie, when are we going to do something? Her pain went straight to my womb. I prayed and kept walking with them to truly listen. I needed a way into a deeper conversation. Then one of the girls asked for money for deodorant, and my roots shook. With embodied clarity, I replied that I can teach them how to make their own deodorant and more. Up to that point I had only ever made beauty products or medicinal ointments for my personal use, ceremonial purposes, or to gift to friends. I recognise now that this was preparation. 

One year later, we have a Beauty School rapidly developing from a love project into a registered non-profit company (NPC), and we are now in the process of registering as a public benefit organisation (PBO). I am in awe on a daily basis of this emerging creation, often delighted and just as frequently overwhelmed. It's taken me a full year to realise that I have become a Mother! A realisation that renders me speechless every time. This may not be my plan, but it is a divined plan I accept with a full body bow.

I’m watching the life force strengthening in these women. Thanks to the Big Mother school out in our natural landscape, they now have the courage to be curious. To ask, investigate and dare I say - play! They are strengthening enough to risk hope. Unspoken dreams have started to find voice. They more frequently dare to speak the wishes they have for themselves and their children.  

As the Mother of Beauty School, with the full accountability of this role, I can see that good structural foundations are required to keep this blooming organisation in balance. One of these structural needs, for which we are currently fundraising, is to provide the women of Beauty School with a foundation in therapeutic massage, manicures and pedicures. These are services that they can apply to generate income for themselves as soon as September, in time for our Pilgrimage: ‘A Walk for Beauty’. 

April Module 1

Massage Training: R6000. We sold a lot of soap and raised R6000 to complete this module, whoop!

May Module 2

Massage Training R6000 + R450 for venue = R6450

(Raised R1550 so far) 

June Module 3 & 4

Massage Training & Immersion R8000 + R 750 for venue = R8750

Manicure / Pedicure training: R3000 + R1500 for manicure kits, basins, towels = R4500

Total fundraising for Foundational Training needs for 2026: R19 700

I now make a request to you, our extended community, to please support us through the donation of equipment, material purchases or financial donations. Or sending our information to people or organisations that would like to collaborate with us. We have a google list of equipments and purchases that I am happy to send to those who wish to support in this way, please drop me a line and I'll send it over to you. Our bank details are below for financial donations of any amount. In this pre-funding stage, everything counts to keep the fats rendering.

We also love to receive bookings for orders, walking tours or workshop experiences. These are our primary sources of income at this pre-funding stage, which will be listed on our soon-to-be-launched website.   

It is our prayer that the knowledge of our landscape, the plants, traditions and our multicultural lineages will ignite a sense of belonging, identity and purpose within the young women such that they will know how to make a good life for themselves and their community, through beauty.

I thank you from all of my people, the women of Beauty School, their children and our village.

Beauty School 

First National Bank 

Branch: 250655 

Account no: 63201480421

Please use your name as reference

SWIFT code for international transfers: FIRNZAJJ

We are blooming on:

Instagram: @beautyschoolmcgregor

https://www.naluthando.co.za/beautyschoolmcgregor  

Warmth, 

Nicole Klassen 

060 312 5843 

Director / Lead Facilitator 

nicole@naluthando.co.za