Newsletter

Newsletter No 7

A belated happy new year to all, and all the best for 2009! By now we figure everyone must be back in the swing of things and that you are all ready and rearing for the year ahead. We will be pushing ahead with our development assistance work this year and consolidating on the lessons we learnt last year. We are also on the look-out for new start up projects that we can get behind, especially in the greater Cape Town metropolitan area, so don't be shy to let us know about interesting developments in your area.

Otherwise, we are happy to announce that after much to-ing an fro-ing we have finally been granted an internet merchant facility by FNB, so it looks like we are going to be burning the midnight oil getting our internet campaigns out there.

Lastly, just a word of reminder that even though things are tough, and looking a bit lean at the start of this year, your support is really invaluable. It is always the poor in our society who feel the pinch worst when difficult times come, and we need all the support we can get to try and insulate the needy in this economic chill. 

Keep spreading the word, and thanks for your support. 

Of course everybody knows that the Jane Goodall institute is all about chimpanzees, but what a lot of people don't know is that it doesn't stop there. The problems affecting chimpanzees, like loss of habitat and poaching, can't be fixed by building higher fences. Instead the attitudes of the people outside the fences needs to change. This is where Roots and Shoots comes in by addressing many of the underlying causes of environmental degradation, such as lack of awareness of the importance of wildlife.

Roots and Shoots takes an active part in educating communities about the environment, and encourages people on the ground to get involved in conservation in their areas. They are also involved in helping communities with day to day problems, such as the community food garden project in a remote village near Bushbuck Ridge in Mpumalanga. It is hoped that once a permanent water source is built the project can get underway and be developed into a type of community village and trade area. A second project in the area called Ecoplan (pictured above), is an after school drop-in centre for children with no parents or stable guardians. JGI France has already initiated a project to donate school uniforms for the children. It is hoped that once the food garden project gets underway  the two projects can be linked as they are in close proximity to each other.

They are also not afraid to get their hands dirty as they showed in November last year when staff members from Bloomberg News group in South Africa, Sue Slotar, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute South Africa, Candice Segal, Roots & Shoots coordinator and Sue Pubrick, JGI newsletter editor volunteered to clean the moat surrounding the chimpanzee enclosure and the inside night rooms at the Johannesburg Zoo (pictured above). The motivation for the big clean up came from Amanda Tillman, a staff member from Bloomberg who wanted to do something for animals. 

After contacting the Jane Goodall Institute South Africa and partnering up with the Johannesburg Zoo it was decided it was high time the moat around the chimpanzee enclosure and the night rooms got a good scrub. Little did they know that at least five years of mud and algae had collected at the bottom of the moat and would need an army force to remove. Needless to say after two days of hard work scrubbing, shoveling, sweeping and enduring rather unpleasant odours, the chimps now have clean and clear water to drink and much more hygienic jungle gyms to play on in their night rooms.

The Gwexintaba community project

As all South Africans know, the festive season just isn't complete without a customary trip to the sea on the 26th of December, so in true African style Louis Fourie loaded up these 15 kids and took them down to Mboyti to celebrate the festive season in style. Clearly a good time was had by all, and the trip served as a great opportunity to enlist a few youthful backs to help with the upkeep of the community's vegetable garden.

The extra-curricular classes that Louis has been giving in horticulture have been paying off nicely with the community really getting stuck in with  the project. The popularity of the garden schemes has spread from the school (where the original garden was) in to the community as a whole, with smaller home gardens springing up around individual homesteads. In the spirit of uBuntu (kindness/humanity) the community has also taken the formation of a common garden to heart, with all comers pitching in. 

While a comprehensive irrigation system is still a way off due to its pricey nature, a big step forward is fencing off all additional plots to ensure that the produce ends up on the table, and not in the local livestock. Fortunately, the area abounds with alien tree species like Bluegum and Pine so when community members go and chop down these trees to make poles for fencing (pictured above) they are also contributing to the conservation of endemic plant species.

Ngwavuma Mpontshini

The popularity of community gardens is spreading across the country and nowhere is this more needed than at Hlengiwe Mthimkulu's school at Ngwavuma Mpontshini in northern Zululand. The original plan of setting up a school feeding scheme to supplement the existing government feeding programme has needed considerable expansion as the budget is exceptionally tight at R1.50 per child per day. Seeing as for many of the 300 kids that attend the school this is their one and only meal in the day, it's vital to be able to extend the service over public holidays and weekends too. Fortunately, residents of the Ingwavuma town are taking the bull by the horns and taking the welfare of the areas kids seriously. The top photo shows them ploughing the fields before the start of the rainy season last year, while the picture directly above shows the garden a short while later. 

The schools enterprising spirit has been recognised in the area and this has helped to draw attention to some of the other needs of the school kids. An important component of the school's functions is that of an orphanage, which gives permanent shelter and sustenance to 20 kids (a section of the orphanage can be seen to the right of the jungle gym). Needless to say, kids need somewhere to play and it was thanks to the attention the school has been receiving that various parties decided to club together and build the jungle gym that you see above for some extra-mural entertainment. Our congratulations go out to all those involved in the school and we hope with your help to expand their capacity to address the needs of this area that has been so dramatically affected by HIV/AIDS.

We hope you've enjoyed this update of our projects, if so, please forward this newsletter onto people that you think might be interested in helping African development, or refer them to the Nomad African Trust website  for more news. Don't be shy to send us a mail at info@nomadafricantrust.co.za if you have any comments or queries. Looking forward to hearing from you, until next time, sala gahle, tot siens!