People & origin
How farms, producers and personal encounters change the way we see rooibos.
People & origin
This page shows why rooibos only really became understandable to me through farms, producers and personal encounters. In the supermarket, we usually see only names, ingredients and manufacturers. It was only in the farm stall in Clanwilliam that I began to become interested not only in the product itself, but also in its origin and the people behind it.
What I offer here with my shop is therefore also meant for people who want to know more than what is printed on a package. It was the encounter with the variety in the farm stall in Clanwilliam that changed the way I looked at it. From then on, I became interested not only in the product itself, but also in its origin and the people connected with it.
A house that carries the place
Behind what I show here are farms, families and also a producer such as African Extracts in Cape Town, with whom visits, conversations and ongoing contact connect me. Only through this did origin become something I could truly experience.
The Ouhuis house is not a decorative backdrop, but part of a farm place where origin has grown over many years.
Once you get to know the people behind it, the way you look at what you previously held anonymously in your hand also changes. It is no longer just a finished item, but becomes an item that can tell its story – of people, places, decisions and paths that would otherwise never be told.
After the working day, what matters becomes clear
Perhaps this is exactly why my relationship with South Africa and with rooibos has gained a different depth over time. At the beginning, there was only the wish to get to know rooibos better. This became encounters, visits and relationships that have remained. That is why I do not experience these paths as classic supplier contacts, but as connections to people who have opened their world to me.
Brief discussions, reliability within the team and daily decisions are just as much a part of origin as fields and harvest.
Where origin is carried forward
Skin care, too, is not backed by an abstract manufacturer, but by a place of work with people, processes and responsibility.
In conversations like these, much becomes understandable that would never be visible on a package: hopes and setbacks, responsibility, difficult decisions and the will to keep going nonetheless. Such encounters have changed the way I look at what I offer. I no longer see only the finished product. I see people whose work supports families. I see places where decisions are made under real conditions. And I also see that origin does not end where something is further processed, but can remain visible in a new form.
Where to go from here
On the following pages, I would like to show some of these people and places of origin more closely. That is why “discovering the people behind it” is not an add-on to the shop for me, but my personal way of approaching the people, places and ways of life behind it.