KwaZulu-Natal is a fascinating place.It can be overwhelming. And inspiring. And exhausting. There is always so much to do, but so much to learn, so many customs and perspectives to understand and respect. Every company in America has a corporate culture. I’ve learned over the years to observe the culture and try to work within it. There are seemingly dozens of different cultures and certainly life experiences that are so diverse in KZN, and few of them have anything in common with my own. I love the effort needed to wait, listen, ask questions, and never assume you’re doing the right thing in the right way.
So, I got a lot done, and as usual, learned a lot. A brief list:
Bheki from Cedara, Tom, Shaun from Afgri
- Agreed with Inkosi (the chief) to form a local committee to work as the Nzinga leadership of Isipho. This will be a group of leaders from schools, municipal government, tribal leadership (the Inkosi’s Induna) , and village leaders. This is a really critical step in getting them to own this and be responsible for success.
- Met in person with Bheki from Cedara College of Agriculture and Shaun from AfGri. Both of them area amazing. Bheki is going to lead the planning of our gardens and gardening training. Shaun is working to get us extremely deep discounts on all gardening materials including fencing, tools, seeds and seedlings. Both are great guys, easy to work with, very enthusiastic. Our food garden program could not possibly succeed without this sort of partnership between government (Cedara), business (Afgri), and NGO (Isipho). We are very lucky to have such great partners.
- We mapped and planned over 450 square meters of new food gardens we will install in August. In the crèches the
This 50mX30m area of mostly weeds will be a thriving vegetable garden for the orphans Drop-In Center in August.
gardens will give young children much needed nutrients daily. In the Drop-In Center the garden will give the orphans an extra nutritious meal and provide some extra income for other needed materials via sales of excess veggies. And in the primary and secondary schools the gardens will be a teaching tool for the science teachers and a source of nutrition for students at lunch time. The impact is going to be massive.
- Agreed with local Department of Education officials on some key items – we always match donated materials with the training to use them properly; training and materials must go hand in hand. We believe we can partner with them in instances where they have a budget for materials but not training or vice-versa. We can partner with them to provide the item they don’t have budgeted in order to ensure they are adding some money into the Nzinga area schools. We will invite them to Nzinga for some the time we are there working and facilitate meetings. Nzinga is so remote many official government people have never been there. We also agreed we will work with their officially approved list of materials providers and teacher trainers. We’ve been looking for that list for six months and now have access to it, which is very helpful.
- Finalized the list of materials needed for classrooms, and the matching training needed, and are working on prioritizing them versus budget. We won’t be able to afford to do it all at once, but the list is so long it would be overwhelming to them if we could.
- Deepened relationships with local municipal, Dept of Agriculture, and other nonprofits in the area, which will help us in everything we do.
We are now ready to have a very effective visit in August. Literally, if all goes as planned, the village of Nzinga will not be quite the same by the end of August. That is a totally overwhelming thought for me right now.
