For 26-year-old food blogger Onezwa Mbola, going back to the basics is how she’s differentiating herself in a sea of content creators.
Mbola is slowly showing those watching through her YouTube channel the idyllic and peaceful life that comes with village living.
Mbola shares videos of herself meditating in the mornings before making mouth-watering dishes, using fruits and vegetables that she sometimes picks from her garden.
You might be mistaken in thinking she’s just capitalising on the cottagecore aesthetic – a fashion aesthetic adopted by teenagers and young adults celebrating an idealised rural life – which has taken the world by storm, but that is not it for Mbola. For her, it’s as simple as just going back home.
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She’s currently living an enviable life in her coastal hometown of Dwesa in Eastern Cape. Mbola worked as a marine navigator and lived in Durban until she lost her job in 2017. She says her love of the sea led her into that career path.
“I grew up in a coastal town and I have always loved the ocean and knew that I wanted to do something that involved being at sea or working at sea in one way or another. When I found out about maritime [studies] I was intrigued and I wanted to incorporate travel with it and that’s how I got into marine navigation."
Mbola travelled a lot to Asia and fell in love with the eastern cuisine. In fact, her first food blogging videos were recreating Asian dishes; she soon added baking to her skills. She started blogging in 2019 after spending two years trying to get back into marine navigation with no success.
Mbola says although she grew up cooking, she wanted to work on it some more, she supported herself during her unemployment years by making baked goods from her Durban apartment.
She started her blog with the moniker @thegalwhoatedurban, the blog was going to be her showcasing all the best dining spots of the city, but she fell pregnant after starting the blog and had to rethink everything.
“In 2019 I was pregnant, 2020 Covid hit, so I only got to go out once and then I thought, okay, so I can’t eat Durban, I might as well showcase my skills whilst I am it. So I did want to eat Durban but that’s what happened and now I don’t even live in Durban anymore,” she laughs.
Mbola says she moved back home when she started feeling confined in Durban due to lockdown; her son was six months old at the time and their small apartment in Durban started feeling constrictive.
“I could have ample space back home and start a garden and focus on improving my cooking. I felt like life was leading me in a direction that I wanted to go in, I couldn’t do all of these things that I had planned like cooking classes because of Covid and I decided it was time to move home and try and figure out what the next move is in a more stable environment.”
Mbola says being back home has been wonderful; she says the calm environment has been rejuvenating. “You can go at your own pace, nothing is rushed. When I came home I wasn’t feeling at my best, I got home I got to recharge and relax, which I couldn’t do when I was in Durban. I could just be. I think that is the best part, that I can just be.”
Mbola says at home she can live the life she’s always wanted to live. She says she’s enjoying being with family and watching the incredible landscape that she grew up with, something she says her followers appreciate.
“I think a lot of my followers enjoy the content I am doing now, I think everyone dreams of moving to the countryside and enjoying life. So I get to do that and people can see that it’s possible…it’s very relaxing for them as well because they can sort of escape through watching my videos, and that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I wanted to show a wholesome life, the kind of life I grew up in.”
Mbola says making money from her content creation is not her primary goal, she just wants to make an impact and show a different side to food and lifestyle content creation.
“So it would be great to make money but for the most part I think I am achieving that goal…of getting people to explore when it comes to food, to get them thinking outside the box and showing people that they can make great dishes with what they have at home.”
She says should brand collaboration happen she wants it to be authentic and true to her brand. Having a garden at home means she has access to some produce, those that she needs to buy from the supermarket she does. For these ingredients her income from freelancing gigs comes in handy. Rural living is great but does come with challenges.
“My home is very rural. I am 50km from the nearest town and the only supermarket doesn’t stock a whole lot of ingredients [I need]. So when I came home it was a matter of adjusting, I had to readjust and that is what inspired the kind of content that I do now… that was the biggest challenge but it also speaks to why it’s so important as a content creator to always reinvent yourself and to be adaptable to the changing times.
"If I had come home and said, there’s no ingredients so I can't make content, then that means I'm not very good at content creating, am I?”
In the future, Mbola hopes to be able to host people at her home to give them the rural experience and to also do a cooking basics series.
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