Aging Gratefully: The Power of Gandhi, Culture and Traditions (Run Time 30 min)

Filmmaker Alan O'Hashi's latest trek took him to South Africa where he began investigating a third documentary in the Aging Gratefully series. This 30minute pilot mostly catches his initial impressions from Tolstoy to Gandhi to Mandela to present day. Gandhi was an early intentional community pioneer. He started two of them during his time in South Africa.

There's an intentional community being formed in the Town of Memel and the Township of Zamani in the South African Free State Province by a friend and colleague, Steven Ablondi and his wife Cindy Burns. Steve and I serve on the National Cohousing Association board of directors.

He tagged along with the Memel Global Community architect and my across the street neighbor Bryan Bowen and a couple of his crew, Jamison and Molly. Bryan lives in the Wild Sage Cohousing community in Boulder.

He embedded myself with a local buy named Shakes in the Black African community and even though it was only for a couple days, he gained quite a bit of insight into the cultural dynamics, which are not unlike those he had encountered among his Northern Arapaho tribal member friends in Wyoming.

As this story develops, how Native American tribes could incorporate cohousing concepts into its growing housing demand will also be investigated. There are generations-long traditional tribal cultures that have a norm about multi-generational care for elders. Does it it makes any sense to form intentional communities around these customs?

This is a 30 minutes documentary about his visit shot mainly on an iPhone 6s. He is collaborating with Pieter Lombaard, who appears in this short. The duo are trying to figure out a great story with a great arc.

Memel Global Community featured denizens:

- Steven Ablondi (cofounder)

- Bryan Bowen (Caddis Architects)

- Shakes Mafanela (SheWins sports coordinator)

- Marley Hauser (SheWins volunteer)

- Pieter Lombaard (Binary Film Works)