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Incredible First Board Meeting

(Miranda) Tonight we had our first board meeting! The energy was great, and everyone got along really well. We had a nice time talking about how each of the members got involved, making a nice toast, and munching on South African foods. We also covered a great deal, some which was on our agenda, such as when our meetings should be, and what we will do during said meetings. We also covered a lot of other stuff, and threw some ideas into the Isipho Cauldron of Wisdom and Ideas ©. I really think this is a good foundation for our board! Off to sleep! I want to be rested for my Friday!

Miranda

P.S.  The Isipho Cauldron of Wisdom and Ideas is not actually copyrighted. I made that with skill and craft, and witty expertise (copy and pasting).

Happy letters from Nzinga! (by Miranda)

In the past week or so we have gotten two extremely uplifting and encouraging letters.  The first was from the Principal at Nzinga Primary School, Mrs. Florence Thandiwe Nxumalo.  She said, “God gave us a blessing that we will never forget that is Isipho;  you wipe away our tears.”  It makes me so happy to see the vision that my dad and I had when we were driving away from the village for the first time two years ago, is now resulting in letters like this.  It also makes me very thankful for all of our volunteers, and donors, who helped create this opportunity for the village.

The second letter we got was from Amahle’s mom, Nonjabulo.  She told us that one of the crèches that received an Isipho garden had so many vegetables they couldn’t eat them all.  So the crèche teachers sold the excess vegetables to villagers who don’t have a garden, and then they used the money they made selling vegetables to buy some books for the children in the crèche!  That made me so happy!  Self sustainability!  This is the sort of thing we are hoping for in Nzinga.  Positive cycles are starting to take place and the people of Nzinga are starting to develop a self-sustaining community!  This is a great bit of progress.

Lastly, we received some photos from a volunteer who helps us in Nzinga, of the gardens full of vegetables.  It makes me so happy to think about the huge difference that something as simple as having fresh vegetables will make in Nzinga.  Thanks to everyone who has supported Isipho and the people of Nzinga, South Africa, things are starting to change!!

One of seven community gardens in Nzinga, now full of fresh vegetables!

One of seven community gardens in Nzinga, now full of fresh vegetables!

University of KwaZulu-Natal African Centre for Food Security Studying Isipho Garden Programs

316_1_ACFSBADGE(SHERI) This week Isipho received some really exciting news.  The University of KwaZulu-Natal African Centre for Food Security is beginning a research project tomorrow, October 20, to study Isipho’s impact on nutrition in the village of Nzinga.

Specifically, they will examine whether Isipho’s approach of providing gardening training in conjunction with fencing and other gardening supplies results in improved health. This will be measured by making a baseline health assessment of the Isipho gardening participants in Nzinga, and then tracking their nutritional levels over time and comparing the Isipho garden recipients with recipients of other (non-Isipho) gardens in South Africa that do not include the training component.

This is especially exciting for us because the African Centre for Food Security is one of the leading organizations in eradicating food deprivation and promoting sustainable livelihoods among the people and nations of sub-Saharan Africa.  This study will give us valuable data that will help quantify what we’re doing in Nzinga, and if what we’re doing is working as well as we hope, this study will provide a template for other nonprofit groups to use in other villages.

In Nzinga, their malnutrition is not caused by a lack of food. In fact, some people in Nzinga are overweight. Malnutrition in Nzinga stems from a lack of variety in the diet. Because the village didn’t have access to fresh vegetables, there was an imbalance in vitamin and mineral levels, resulting in stunted growth, chronic illnesses and birth defects. By reintroducing spinach, beets, chard, beans, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, butternut and cabbage, Isipho hopes to improve the nutritional levels in Nzinga. This study will substantiate our success.

When Your Vice President is 15

We just had a fantastically productive weekend retreat where we hashed out all of the 2010 Isipho goals and strategies, then broke everything down into tasks to make it all happen. Look for great things from Isipho next year!

It was a busy weekend, with a lot of work on our agenda. But as you can see by this video, when your Vice President is a 15-year-old, even the most productive meetings can be made comfortable. Just show up in your pajamas and hang upside down. I think all businesses should allow that!

- Sheri

Ngizophenduka – I will return

[Tom] Sorry for the lack of updates the last few days, as our time in Nzinga was extremely busy and intense.  Honestly, looking back on the last few days now, exhausted, sitting in the Joberg airport, I don’t even know what to write. So much has happened.

Eighteen people received certificates for graduating from our three day garden training provided by Cedara College, and they all have plans for creating plots that can be rotated properly in their gardens in the Creches (preschools) and schools and orphan drop-in centers they represent. They will immediately begin implementing what they learned, teaching the parents and other adults affiliated with their respective gardens. In two weeks when the folks from Cedara and the Department of Agriculture return, there will be more than 60 people in the village who have worked on gardens using knowledge they didn’t have several days ago.

Due to the unbelievable generosity of several people, over 20 people are now constructing fences for their own individual family gardens, and more will begin preparing their family gardens soon.  They will all receive training and a “garden starter kit” when they have finished building their fence (their initial sweat equity).  

There are so many emotional things that happen in Nzinga when we are there, but this time, something happened in the States that made us all really pause and understand the power of connection and the impact one generous person can have in the world… When we received the forty starter kits, we then needed roughly $1,000 to buy the fencing in order to kick off the greatly expanded individual family garden program before we left, so we made a request on our blog. The next day, we received a very generous donation from Diana Getz in memory of her recently deceased brother, who she simply described as “a generous person.” 

We received donations from others as well, and the impact is something that will last for generations. It is the pride of being able to create something themselves, the relief in being able to better take care of their children, and the legacy of once again being able to pass on to their children the knowledge of how to plow the earth for sustenance that was lost over the past decades. And we will make sure they know of the generous people who made it possible.

As we get home and are better able to download and edit photos and video we will be sharing much, much more. For now, ngiabonga – thank you – for everything.

I always wanted to be an anthropologist…

[Sheri] So far this trip, Tom has blogged a couple of times about the business end of our work in Nzinga – about the collaborations, meetings, etc. I’d like to try to share my first-time visitor impressions of life in Nzinga, and introduce you to some of the villagers.
I knew from Tom’s photos and descriptions last year that life here is hard and that the people are warm, welcoming and beautiful. Those descriptions are so inadequate. Both the good and the bad here are so extreme.
Life here is unbelievably hard. Right now, it is cold and windy and dry. Dust blows into my eyes and lungs, and grit covers my skin. Every task takes an eternally long time. Although there is cell reception here, many can’t afford a cell phone, so communication often requires walking a long distance to someone’s house in order to tell them something. The terrain here is hilly and very rough and rocky, so even walking is slow. Meals take a long time because the process involves gathering wood and making a fire. Preparation is slow because there’s no pre-packaging, ready-to-eat, or popping anything into the microwave. Cleanup requires heating water over the fire and pouring it into two basins; one for washing and another for rinsing. The plates are scraped and the scraps are thrown over the fence to feed the chickens and goats.
I also experienced bathing in a bucket this week. A bath takes about an hour, even though I was in the water all of five minutes, because the water has to be heated over the fire after the dishes are clean.  Also, I learned that baths are not very effective. I took a bucket bath on Monday and Thursday this week. To take a bucket bath, the water must be heated over the fire, then poured into a bucket. I had to carry my bucket of water to my room (a bucket of water is heavy!) then pour the water into a wider, shallower basin. There is no heat or insulation in the rooms, so it was very cold. After two days of working in the dirt and blowing wind, and smoke from the fires, I was grateful to emerge from my bucket bath feeling squeaky clean. However, the next steps in the bucket bath process are to dump the bathwater and put away the basin and bucket. So after drying off and dressing in clean clothes, I headed out with my bathwater. Now, mind you, there’s no time for a bath during the day, so baths must be taken after dinner, when it’s too dark to do any work. I had to walk about 30 yards in the dark, over  uneven terrain with my bucket of water.  And I’m not familiar with this path in the dark, nor the process.  By the time I got to the place where I could dump the bucket, half the water had sloshed out onto my shoes. I dumped the water, rinsed out the basin at the pump, and went to the rondavel (round mud hut with a thatched roof) to put them away. The rondavel is where the fire is, and there is no chimney so it fills with smoke. I put the bucket and basin away and then returned to my room. The wind was blowing fiercely, and I could feel the dirt getting caked in my wet hair. By the time I got back inside my room, I was covered with dirt and smelled like smoke. So much for being clean!
So you have a sense of just how difficult the simple tasks of communicating, eating and bathing are. Just imagine how difficult some of the other tasks can be!
What amazes me is that no matter how difficult their lives are, and no matter how meager their supplies, the people of Nzinga remain happy, proud and hopeful. And they love and support each other like family.
I spent a few hours at a crèche (preschool) the other day, and still have difficulty digesting what I saw. About 10 children under the age of four, and a teacher who is an elderly woman meet every weekday from 8:30 – 1:30 p.m. in a little mud room that is about 8’ X 12’. In that room is one card table and two plastic chairs, a bag of handmade blocks, and one book that the teacher made herself out of some pieces of paper and cut-out magazine photos. What was most astonishing about this is that with no resources, and no teacher training, this woman manages to spend five hours a day engaging the children in singing, dancing, reciting poems, make-believe play, etc. these children can count, know their ABC’s, the days of the week, the months of the year, their colors, shapes, etc. and can say them all in Zulu and in English! Oddly enough, the old woman can’t speak any English; she just learns enough words that she can pass along to the children so that they have a head start when they reach grade R (equivalent to U.S. first grade). When I told this lady that we were coming back on Monday and would be bringing blocks, puzzles, books and games, she got up and danced a little jig. I told her we would be back every year. She asked me (through our interpreter, Nonjabulo) if it would be possible next year to bring two small plastic tables and 10 small plastic chairs. She explained that it often gets well below zero (Celsius), and that the children’s bottoms get raw and chapped because they have to sit on the frozen floor. This would never have occurred to me. We take the simplest things for granted, and nothing is simple in Nzinga.
The day we arrived in Nzinga, it was National Women’s Day in South Africa. There was no official celebration in Nzinga, although some women told me that they had had their own celebrations. The Zulu culture is paternalistic, and women have very little voice. However, I’ve noticed that women “make the world go ‘round” in Nzinga. The women are incredibly strong. When things need to be done, it’s the women who come forward to do it. The other day we put the word out that we needed some people to come help us hoe a garden. Right away, six old women arrived with their hoes, and got to work. One of them even used a cane, but that didn’t slow her down at all! And I was mortified that she covered twice as much area as I did, and broke up the earth twice as deep as I could!
The people of Nzinga must think I’m pretty hilarious, with my sunscreen and lip balm, and my weak attempts at Zulu language, but they’ve welcomed me like family and I know that I’ve made lifelong friends this week.