Last week, I had a meeting with the non-profit Moya Center just 45 minutes away from the capital city Mbabane, where I stay. This group provides orphan care as well as gardening workshops. They have been working here for many years and is well-respected. They have agreed to partner with us on setting up a moringa trial plot in their area. The Malkerns Research Station is the primary agricultural research office of the government and is located very close to the Moya Center. Despite being in the Highveldt - Midveldt, this proximity makes it easier for monitoring by the Ministry of Agriculture's officers. This plot is within an NCP garden. NCP (Neighborhood Care Points) are places in the community where young children and elderly come together during the day for activities, education, gardening, and a bit of lunch. Some NCPs are quite successful while some are ineffective. I saw the NCP and plot today was very impressed by the balanced meal provided for the children and all the food and herbs they were growing from their garden. The Moya Center assists this NCP and has helped provide farming skills to the youngsters. All the gardening is done by the children! The soil is good and has a warm climate; the moringa will do well here.
The Ministry of Agriculture is naturally concerned about the ecological impact of introducing any foreign species, such as the moringa. Two trees have, recently been on the minds of the Swazis. The Australian wattle is a very fast growing and proliferative tree that has invaded the Highveldt. It has radically changed the ecosystem. While the environmentalists are concerned with the eco-impact, the average folks are quite glad that its here. They say it is very good and abundant firewood and is used in most housing and fencing. The other tree is the Jatropha tree. This tree has been imported and grown in large plantations by the D1 Oils company for bio-fuel production. The recent scandal is that the some farmers have tried using the poisonous seed-cake (left over from oil the oil press) as animal fodder.
As a consequence, the government has, understandably, become quite conservative about introducing anything else. Moringa, however, is known to be non-invasive and has never had any bad repute in the development community. We must convince the government that this tree will not cause any problems down the line. One of the possible key points is that if it is already growing here in Swaziland, than it would be not really importing something brand-new and unknown. I have been trying to find moringa in Swaziland and just heard by second-hand that there are some mature moringa trees in Swaziland somewhere. Somebody at the FAO supposedly knows where they are. I'll let you guys know how that goes.
These past few days I have been down in the Lowveldt around the Siphofeneni and Big Bend region attending fruitful meetings. I had a chat with a local seed dealer in the Siphofeneni area who may be able to assist us with odds and ends. Also met the head farmer of the Tambuti Estates plantation. Tambuti Estates is a for-profit company with many many hundreds of acres of citrus and vegetables. We may set a trial plot on the plantation for benefit and exposure to the many farm-hands.
The most important meeting was, however, with the well-reputed Cabrini Mission. This Catholic mission provides a hostel and schooling for 150 orphans in addition to a regional clinic, home out-reach for TB and HIV/AIDS, supplementary food aid, and agricultural activities. They will be partnering with us first to conduct the trials on their land and continue later on for sharing moringa with families in the region. If it goes well, they talked about adding the moringa powder to their supplementary food packages. In addition to working with us on the moringa, I may be spending some time in their clinic observing and assisting.
On the way to the Cabrini Mission, the PCVs and I took an old mini-bus from Siphofeneni to St.Philips. This clay dirt road was terrible; just shakes and rattles the whole way through. The road was full of small gulleys where old rains have washed through. Half way through the 1 hour ride, the over-packed mini-bus broke down on top of this hill. One of the PCVs sat in the very front seat above the engine. She had to get out for the driver to try to fix the vehicle. After waiting for 15 minutes for so, I squeezed out the window and walked out into the bush for a wiz. On the way back, I saw the bus moving in reverse and thought, "Fantastic, its fixed!" I kept walking and the bus kept rolling. I looked at the PCV who had gotten off the bus, she was cracking up! I looked the bus and realized that it was, in fact, NOT fixed. The brakes gave! It was just rolling down the hill with a bus full of passengers that included our friend! Luckily, there was no accident. After that, we just grabbed our bags and managed to hitch a ride with a passing truck (bakkie they call it here).
In Swaziland (and I think also in South Africa), the whites are pretty well-off relatively. The public transportation is taken primarily by the blacks. I have never seen a white (or any other foreigner) taking public transport or hitching rides. Basically, its just me and the PCVs. Yesterday, the PCV and I hitched a ride from Big Bend to Siphofeneni on the back of a truck with some blacks sitting on some massive tires. Afrikaaners (white Africans of Dutch descent) and tourists drove past us in disbelief. "Who are these loons??" The look on their faces told all.
Today, I am heading out the field with a Young Heroes officer to see them work and see their orphan families. This is the second time that I am going. The family that we visited the first time were in poor shape. The family of eight was headed by an 18 year old girl. Of the seven young children, three was her own. Some of them could go to school, some couldn't. The problem is that the government provides a set amount of money for each student's school fees but the the each school charges different amounts of money. The family lived in three small clay-mud and rock huts of about 6 ft by 10 ft. In Swaziland, there are houses and huts and these were most definitely huts. On that small homestead, there was a small plot where they grew an insufficient amount of maize. The youngest one had a bowl of large grasshoppers that would most definitely be cooked and eaten later on. I do not know the cultural context of that observation, but my impression is that the bowl of grasshoppers is a result of their hard times.
This coming generation of young Swazis are going to face a very difficult challenge. Even though the government has invested quite a bit of money in education, the lack of parents in many of the children's lives are wreaking havoc on the social fabric. Many parents have either passed away or have just abandoned their children. On a homestead, there were about seven children being cared for by a grandmother (gogo). School was out so they just played all day long outside. It seemed that they didn't have much interaction from their gogo. And this was a relatively well-off family. The children were well-fed and there were two big houses. Imagine the strain on such families if they were poor! The parent-child disjunct will result in loss of important intergenerational knowledge; most importantly, there will be the loss of subsistence farming skills.
During that visit, the fact hit me that these 8 children living in those mud huts would literally and simply starve but for the assistance of the WFP and YoungHeroes. In aid and development theory, there is a lot of talk about sustainability and long-term solutions. While those aspects are important, when its simply food or no food, its time to just give the man some freaking fish.
Will provide some pictures later. Saw something really disturbing today, am still digesting and trying to come to grips with it.
