10 minutes with local tastemakers

As our date at the Garden Café dawns, I skip over to Ferreira’s nursery where I’m to meet Beauty Boois. The distant drag of a concertina prompts me to look up from the pavement and, lo and behold, the source of the song is a man sitting on a barstool under a red beach umbrella. Within a five metre radius is a street food vendor and a local craftsman sitting cross-legged, à la George Clooney, only he’s not sipping a Nespresso but busy with a new wire and bead creation. This already ought to give you an indication of the kind of woman I’m meeting - weird and wonderful - not at all what you expected, but exactly what you needed.

She rocks up with hair larger than life itself and Damien, her 8-year-old son, on her heels. Beauty digs this cafe. It’s hidden and humble and the cobblestone walk through the nursery makes her giddy. She’s a self-proclaimed Plant Slut - sprouting from her heyday chore of watering her mom’s macramé-supported life forms. The sound of water trickling through the soil fascinates her to this day. “It’s the plants saying thank you.”

Beauty, who is Windhoek born and bred, wears many hats. Or yoga pants. After she had unfortunately been rejected by her dream school in Cape Town, she put her dreams of drama and film on hold. And opted for the next best thing - marketing. Very much like mushrooms sprinkle their spores, she came back home and pursued a degree in Psychological Counselling. Opening her very own practice and closing it two years later. It takes its toll: listening to an unparalleled metric of problems, day in and day out. She’s shifted her seven chakras to self-love. And not to the bath bomb, collagen face mask, expensive red wine kind, but the kind of care that led her to chant “I am free” - because she genuinely is. So free, in fact, that she and Damien are booked on a one-way flight to Cambodia to begin a new life teaching English and doing sun-salutations to her heart’s desire.

My hardest-hitting question - how to maintain a plantbased diet in a land of biltong and braais - was met with a clarifying answer. “Plant-based” has become somewhat of a yuppie word-of-the-moment that I for one struggled to comprehend. But Beauty bluntly describes it as having plenty of plate-fulls of fruit and veggies and not saying no to droëwors - her kryptonite.

Her poetry performances and surf expeditions are more frequent - sufficiently stimulating her restless soul. Plus her psychological counselling services have migrated online where she can give guidance from anywhere in the world. She’s taste-made her somewhat 3k followers in captivating IGTV videos, covering topics we can all learn a thing or two from. Like unlearning people-pleasing behaviour and how accountability and taking responsibility can set you free.

My fifth and final question: how the hell does she pull off black lipstick?

Her answer? The same way MY boss pulls off red lipstick on the daily - with the confidence that comes from loving yourself, your freedom, the planet and its plants. And droëwors.

Charene Labuschagne