WISDOMKEEPERS
Parmuat Koikai, Lmakiya Lesarge, Louis Sarno, Vetkat Regopstaan Kruiper
parmuat koikai
Parmuat Koikai is a Maasai Elder from the Kitilikini Community in Loita Hills. At a young age, he trained as a shaman/laibon/medicine man, traveling throughout his region as a healer. For many years he has been the keeper of the forest herbs in the Naimina Enkiyio Forest, the Sacred Forest of the Lost Child, providing these herbs for all the Maasai communities throughout Kenya and Tanzania. He is also the keeper of his great grandfathers' kidongi (the horn that keeps the stones). For many years, for wisdom and insight, Parmuat has been learning to read and consult these stones with surprising accuracy. Parmuat presently holds a government job as the leader of the Loita Village elders, the "mzee kijiji" for all the Loita Villages.
Lmakiya Lesarge
Lmakiya with his relatives
LMAKIYA LESARGE, is a graduate of Social Sciences from Moi University Eldoret. Born and brought up in Samburu County, he is a strict adherent to the Samburu cultural values and ideals. He is enthusiastic and committed to documenting and preserving his people's indigenous cultural knowledge for prosperity. This has exposed him to vast wealth and depth of knowledge that makes him one of the finest cultural tourist guides in Kenya. Lesarge is a respected Samburu elder and has mentored many in the younger Samburu generation on the importance of adherence to and preservation of their culture. He is the author of The Samburu: A Brief Cultural Guide and Proverbs of the Samburu and Folktales of the Samburu. Lmakiya and Murphy met in 1998. GVF provided a computer, cassettes and a cassette player for him to record the Samburu proverbs, as well as sponsored him to lecture in Santa Barbara and for him to attend a mythological retreat at Pacifica Graduate Institute.
LOUIS SARNO
Posthumously Global Voice would like to honor LOUIS SARNO as one of our wisdomkeepers for his wisdom in collecting and recording the music and forest rituals of the Ba-Benjellé Pygmies in the Central African Republic, Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Reserve.
He was born in 1954 in Newark, New Jersey, and died in 2017.
Global Voice Foundation helped fund Louis and his mission to help the BaAka of CAR since 2002 and continues to fund Louis’ vision for the people through Radio Ndjoku. He lived for over 35 years with the BaAka for whom he loved, respected and cared for. His guidance continues in our hearts and minds and he remains a strong force acting as our Wisdomkeeper.
He is the author of Song from the Forest: My life among the Ba-Benjellé Pygmies.
Vetkat Regopstaan Kruiper
Posthumously, we would like to honor Vetkat, who was born in 1969, Twee Rivieren, Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park National Park. He died in 2007, on the farm Blinkwater where he lived, just outside the Park.
Vetkat Kruiper Regopstaan Boesman was a member of the Khomani San tribe who lived in the now Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. His father was a healer and crafter in his community, and clearly had a huge impact on Vetkat’s knowledge and understanding of San culture and customs. He is one of very few San artists who sustained the ‘lost’ (according to some) tradition of San rock art, but with ink on paper as medium. The animality, spirituality and symbolism in Vetkat’s works has been the topic of several academic studies.
Vetkat’s works are in private collections at the Natal Museum Services, the McGregor Museum at Kimberley and the University of Pretoria. From 2002 to 2005 his art was displayed at the United Nations (UN) as part of an exhibition of indigenous art, while his 2004 tour of the United States of America culminated in his addressing the UN.
In 2005, Vetkat advised I. Murphy Lewis on her dissertation as they traveled across South Africa for his exhibition and the launch of his wife, Belinda Kruiper's Kalahari Rainsong. Four of his drawings illustrate her book, Across the Divide to the Divine: An African Initiation (IML Publications, 2024).
Shortly before his death in 2007, Vetkat was invited by the Department of Built Environment at the University of Pretoria to do a solo exhibition on the UP campus. All the works on exhibit were purchased by the University, and constitutes the largest assemblage of the artist’s works in a single collection.
In his honor, his wife Belinda Kruiper Org, her brother Ricardo Matthee, her cousin Simone Sonn, as well as John Britz and Keagan Botha have created the VetKat Art Foundation to benefit other San Bush-men-women-and-children artists. Purchases of Vetkat’s originals as well as prints can still be made.