In March 2020, everything changed.
It wasn’t just about sanitising hands, wearing masks and social distance. Or navigating the landslide of economic fallout that has threatened and in some cases annihilated businesses, both large and small. Nor was it just about learning to cope with the fear and uncertainty that comes when facing a volatile and ambiguous future.
With closed borders and a moratorium on nothing but the most essential of goods and services, I believe we were forced to come face to face with everything that is most wrong in our world. Everything that doesn’t work - the tremendous flaws in our economy, education, social welfare, healthcare, ecology, how our working lives look and food production – has surfaced, been magnified and shown to be grossly lacking when it comes to being of true service to humanity.
It is surely significant that at a time when human activity on this planet was globally shut down, it was only then that Nature began to thrive and flourish once more. It was in the moment of global pause, that we had the incredible opportunity to reflect on what kind of normal we had come from, and what kind of future normal we want to create together.
As much as salt is essential to life, we at Oryx Desert Salt want to lead the way in striving fiercely for what is essential to human wellbeing on every level. For this reason, we will continue to invest in and promote the livelihoods of small, women-led businesses such as Ukama Packaging Solutions and our community-led sewing team of seamstresses who make our cotton bags and aprons, as well as Macassar Pottery, a business co-owned by its employees and offering a safe work space for youth, who make our clay salt pots.
We will continue to contribute a percentage of monthly turnover to the Khomani San and Mier communities who own !Xaus Lodge in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the Kalahari Desert.
We won’t pretend business isn’t tough and the future unpredictable at the moment, as it is for most of us. But one thing we do know as we slowly emerge from lockdown; we are determined to help shape what the future looks like by using the energy of our pivotal business values to move us forward:
We are human and earth-centred; whatever we do has to be good for both humans (individually and in communities) and the living earth. We believe in building community, collaborations and partnerships.
Even at a time when social distancing is still the order of the day, our awareness of what is socially essential needs to be more acute than ever.
Please join us, we’d love to hear from you. Apart from our retail range, we sell salt in bulk to restaurants, airlines and many food producers.
Contact deets: Samantha Skyring
