Flying Cows see the world from above. From up there you notice patterns: how systems connect, where they break, what keeps repeating across countries, cultures and decades. For thirty five years, working in telecommunications and education across Europe and Africa, that was much of my view.

But every morning the Flying Cows land, and the ground beneath their hooves is never quite still. Something rumbles in the depths, shifting before anyone can name it. I learned to listen for it in Johannesburg, a city built above its gold mines, also known as KwaNdonga Ziyaduma, the place where the walls rumble.

Those depths are in us too, where what we carry starts to shake before we have words for it. What I see from above and hear from below only makes sense to me once I have felt it.

For more than twenty years I worked to bridge the digital divide between those who do have access to technology and know how to use it to their benefit and those who don’t. I learned that technology itself doesn’t build the bridge. People do. Together. I call this human infrastructure.

Now I feel another divide opening, between technology that claims ever more of our capabilities and what it actually means to be human.

Exploring it is the adventure I have been waiting for.

The Next Bridge

Some moments in history ask us to rethink who we are. We are living in one. Machines seem to grow smarter and faster every month, and many of us quietly fear they are taking over.
I suspect the next bridge rests on the same foundation as the first: people, and what they can build together. But it needs something more.

Something that cannot be built, only discovered along the way, when we meet the world with wonder.

I do not have answers. I have questions worth walking with.

Every rumble is an invitation

Embrace, embody, express

Every time of change has its rumble, in the world and in ourselves. I hear it now in the surge of generative AI, in the places we live, in the conversations I have, and in my own life. My work is to meet it in three ways, alone and together.

Embrace the rumble. In the world, I sit with what is, without rushing to fix or explain, until I can hear what people and places are actually saying. In myself, I do the same: I let the unsettled feelings stay long enough to be heard. In round tables, I invite others to do this together, sitting with the hard questions about technology and being human without rushing to close them.

Embody the rumble. What I hear outside, I let in. It shakes things loose and shakes things up. I have learned that I cannot push away what no longer fits; when I let myself feel it fully, it loosens on its own. And what shifts in me changes how I see the world again. On rumble walks, a group brings a shared question; we gather, walk mostly in silence, and return to share what we heard.

Express the rumble. What moved inside finds its way out, so the vibration travels on and others can feel it too. I do this in talks, where audiences leave with a question that stays with them, and in my writing: the columns and field notes on this site and on my Substack, KwaNdonga Ziyaduma.

Among those who inspire this way of working is Otto Scharmer, whose Theory U has shaped my thinking for many years.

Human Infrastructure

Imagine a flock of passionate young teachers taking flight into schools across the country. Fresh from university, they bring digital skills, subject knowledge, curiosity and a willingness to learn. Working alongside teachers and school leaders, they help turn digital resources into meaningful learning experiences for young people. And what they discover in the classroom, they carry back into their academic journeys, turning practice into research and research back into practice.

This is the Digital Skills Coaches model I developed through Flying Cows of Jozi, as part of seeing how transformation happens.

The ecosystem brings together people across government, civil society, business and communities around shared educational purpose, and it takes ongoing effort and coordination to hold it together.

The learning ecology is the everyday web of relationships in and around schools, where people shape what becomes possible for learning, and where trust, consistency and presence matter over time.

The human bridge is the people, the Digital Skills Coaches, who move between practice and knowledge, carrying what happens in classrooms back into inquiry and understanding, and bringing ideas back into practice.

Each of these levels influences and is influenced by the others. When they strengthen one another, change becomes more likely to hold.

Together they form what I call Human Infrastructure: the bridge people build where technology alone cannot reach.

In more than twenty years of education and technology (EdTech) projects, I have learned what makes that bridge hold, and what makes it give way. See the projects where it took shape.

About

My name is Josine Overdevest and living in inner city Johannesburg for the past thirteen years has been one of the great joys and revelations of my life. In a lively neighbourhood where nobody looks like me, speaks my language or shares my background, I found something unexpected: a profound sense of belonging. Not to a place or a culture, but to humanity itself.

Flying Cows of Jozi takes its name from a fable I wrote about the city’s people, who by day navigate the hardships of urban life and by night take to the skies in search of inner rather than outer gold. Beneath them, the city has its own name: KwaNdonga Ziyaduma, the place where the walls rumble. The Flying Cows taught me to see from above. The rumble taught me to listen from the depths. I carry both wherever I go.