Week 1

Today is Saturday and there's no field work scheduled for today. Just writing up the week's updates to send back and putting together essentially the business plan.

This past week has been spent visiting the demonstration sites, gathering data, and discussing future plans. I traveled with our excellent colleague, Thokozane. He was a knowledgeable farmer, jack-of-all-trades, a good person, and friend of the Poglitshes. After a year and a half working with us, he is now the moringa expert of Swaziland. He is in the process of marriage now; he told me that there are three different ceremonies that must be performed. These ceremonies can be done in a week or over years. His last ceremony is planned for September; he invited me, I will try blend in and document it for you.

 On monday I went out to visit Ruth and Rudy, a very rough 40 min ride from Mbabane. Ruth has been helping us with the moringa trees for the past one and a half years and without her, we would be failing miserably. We discussed how things have been and did some planning. Thokozane will be offering moringa cultivation workshops to rural community groups all over the country. We expect the first workshops to begin in mid-September for a number of Peace Corp volunteers. We will conduct this first series of workshops together in order to refine the message and get everything right; we want to deliver a strong message that moringa is a strong nutritional supplement, not some miracle drug. There was a study from a few months back concluding that 80% of Swazis consult with traditional healers. That is not to say that traditional healers are fakes, I am just saying there's a strong sense of herbal and natural remedies that may or may not be based on scientific evidence. Anyways, Thokozane will be giving these workshops independently and, hopefully, make a fair income from these training sessions. He has thirteen nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, and children to provide for on his homestead!

 In addition to the training sessions, we're going to try to enter the informal / grey market to generate income the rural farmers. There are no jobs out in the bush and the migration of men to the cities have really stressed the traditional family and support structure. If we can set up this market in town (maybe even beyond Swaz), we'll be able to put some money in  the pockets of these farmers. Typically, these farmers are women with many nieces, nephews, and children to feed; HIV has orphaned 80,000 children in Swaziland. The money can be used to pay for school fees, buy other food, pay for healthcare, and whatever else they feel are important. We're going to try to get Kiva funding to help Thokozane establish this small business. If you don't know what Kiva is, just take a look at their website (I think its Kiva.org)

 On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, we visited a few other sites. At one of the sites, local women have been adding the moringa to their regular diets and have given up positive reports. We recorded three of the interviews and I would love to post it for you guys to see, but they were conducted by Thokozane totally in siSwati. Our friend Bongi reported that the farmers understand the importance of nutrition and are keen to grow moringa for themselves. In the northern mid-veld, they have integrated moringa into their training program (funded by Garden Africa from the UK) and its been a hit. People have been buying the moringa powder from our sites faster than they can produce it and at exorbitant prices (400R[50USD] for 2 Kg). If people are willing to pay for it, then it means they value it, which means they feel it is important for their health.

Although we've gotten updates from only half of the sites, the demand seems to be there; people want to grow this for themselves.

The pictures are; Ruth talking with Thokozane, following a woman to some homesteads to do the interviews, and dinner at Vusumnotfo with Kathy Gau, Bongi (from Moya Center, one of our partners), Thokozane, and myself. The camera did something strange where I cannot extract some of the photos, but next update I should have posted pictures of the moringa plots!