Today we’d like to introduce you to Sartteka Nefer.
Hi Sartteka, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
This is such an open-ended question and I could probably fill a George R.R. Martin series with the details of my life. Most importantly, I am a mother and my son has been the driving force in the choices I have made to better my life and be a positive human example to him. Brief background, I was born and raised here in Sunny San Diego and though I have traveled often, I only lived outside of San Diego for three years when I moved to Denver after my undergraduate studies. I attended Grossmont Community College where I studied Psychology with an emphasis on Human Sexuality and Child Development. I transferred to San Diego State University with my major in Psychology and minors in LGBT Studies and Women’s Studies. While doing my undergrad, I was a McNair Scholar and spent much of my time doing research in Human Sexuality and Psychology and later focused on relationship violence. I did an internship with San Diego Family Justice Center, Dress for Success Program, and License to Freedom. After my graduation, I moved to Denver for a bit, where I did internships at Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Gender Identity Center of Colorado. Ultimately, the cold, and the desire to connect with community, brought me home. I was accepted into San Diego State University’s Women’s Studies Master’s Program and moved back to San Diego. Not long after my sister and I moved back to San Diego with our children, Alfred Olango was murdered by El Cajon police after a call for mental health assistance from PERT. For a period of time after that, everything we did revolved around active demonstrations, protests, and organizing. From Olango Village, a few other Black women and I came together to create an organization that facilitated or helped to facilitate a number of amazing community events that were healing and transformative. Around this time, I elevated my edible gardening from a few potted porch plants and a tower garden to a plot at Mt. Hope Community Garden. One plot turned into three and before you know it, I was adding “farmer” to my bag of tools and participating in the conversation around sustainability, regenerative agriculture, food justice, and environmental justice and bringing my kinda-radical intersectional views to the tables and spaces I occupied. Oh, I forgot to mention that for twelve years during this timeI was also “hustling” or working in the illegal sex industry. It wasn’t until I became very active in demonstrations against police brutality that I decided to leave the lifestyle for good. I worked as an Associate and credentialed substitute teacher for about three years after my MA and started to study birth work in my spare time. I became a certified doula with For the Village and began supporting families during their prenatal period, birth, and postpartum. I have a passion for learning and believe in holistic, traditional healing, so I decided to add to my toolbox by taking certification training programs such as Grandma’s Hands Herbal Postpartum Healing from the Black southern perspective, The Nafsa Project School traditional Moroccan postpartum healing, Milk Magic Educators from Nurturely and a Childbirth Education from Birthing From Within. I became a Climate Ambassador for Environmental Justice with the San Diego Urban Sustainability Coalition and IamGreen and started an organization called P.H.A.T.C.R.O.P.S. an acronym for Providing Healthier Alternatives to Communities Reclaiming Our People’s Sustainability. I took a permaculture design certification program with San Diego Sustainability Institute. If all that wasn’t enough, I run a spiritual-based home business, Asha Nia, where I handcraft gemstone jewelry and other spiritual tools and an organization called Resilience Building Knowledge which focuses on safety, rescue and defense training in our communities. Where do I plan to go from here?? Well, one goal of PHATCROPS is to establish local food forests in communities living under food apartheid and to continue to educate folks on the significance of growing their own food and collective permaculture. Asha Nia would love to have a brick and mortar to showcase the jewelry and spiritual crafts we make with enough room for a yoga class. I will continue to work with For the Village while also building up my birth work business Nefer Het Ankh which translates to Beautiful House of Life, where I offer full-spectrum doula services, childbirth education, and lactation education classes as well as some traditional cultural birth and postpartum practices such as the Hamam bath (traditional practice in Morocco). Nefer Het Ankh will one day become a holistic birth center. My love for learning will only push me to continue from here.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I’d like to think there are no smooth roads in this journey we call life. “Nothing good comes easy,” said Bob Marley. Ultimately, I believe we come here to this lifetime/realm/body to do certain things, to learn certain lessons, and to make an impact on the world and her inhabitants. Healing and transformation is going to be tough, there will be times where we feel like we can’t continue and there will be the times that remind us what we fight for. When I lived in Colorado, my mom took me to this place called the Butterfly Pavilion, it was so beautiful and I LOVE butterflies so it was perfect. There was an area at the Pavilion where they kept the chrysalises and you could watch as some hatched and I remember watching for a while thinking to myself how difficult that must be, to emerge from a small dark cocoon-like shell, in a new body, with new wings that are soft and a little damp, you have to pull yourself out of a small hole by your tiny little butterfly legs and then try to open your damp tissue paper-thin wings and then attempt to take flight all on your own. The majority of struggles I have faced in my life have been due to structural and systemic racism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, capitalism, and individualism which is exacerbated by intersecting identities and cognitive dissonance due to believing and knowing something better for this world and trying to survive! The key is remembering each challenge or obstacle we face is like stretching or training before the next hurdle or match. We just have to focus on building that muscle memory and collecting the tools that will later be of use to us.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I wear many hats. I am a mother, daughter, sister, and TeeTee (aunt). I am a collectivist, activist, pedagogue, farmer, and birth worker, I am a spiritual person, someone who honors our connection with the Earth and the cosmos. I went into detail about what I do in my businesses, but overall, I am just trying to leave the Earth in better shape than when I got here and to make a difference in the lives of as many folks as I possibly can. I am most proud of leaving work that I was comfortable in, where I had more financial security and where I made young students of color feel heard and valued (which was very difficult) to trust in myself and my vision and to completely bet it all on myself, my family and the support from our community to build these much-needed organizations and businesses to capacity to serve those who need it most.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
As a youth, I was a very misunderstood child. Adults often mistook my open communication and my desire to share knowledge as me being a mouthy little girl. My mother instilled in me a very strong sense of right and wrong and because I had plenty of examples of discrimination, I knew all too well what it looked like and that I would not tolerate it. Although I got good grades and scored very high in statewide testing, I was in trouble often and spent time in Juvenile Hall as well as numerous probation and charter schools. But I was a loving child, who stood up for people, fought for what I believed in, questioned everything, and spoke my mind. I loved sports, I played Softball for eleven years and was known for most base steals in my league. My mom worked at Jack Murphy Stadium so I spent many days hanging out with Padre players and watching baseball. For a short time, I played a little basketball and did some field events like shot put for my middle school. I have always LOVED animals and so I have always been surrounded by them (domesticated and wild alike). Personality and interest-wise, I was a nerdy child who loved reading, writing poetry, learning about other cultures and languages, and exploring nature.
