Letter from the Nomad African Trust’s project manager.
Welcome again to all, it’s the start of a new month and time for another update of life in the land of the Nomad African Trust. It’s been a busy month for all involved with a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing getting new donors on board and trying to create awareness of the Trust’s activities. The website is proceeding apace and I’d like to thank our beneficiaries for contributing some of their photo’s to help make it look pretty. I have also been adding various conservation and development related articles onto the website on a daily basis, so if you haven’t been onto the site for a while, go and have a look for some enlightening reading. We are finally working out the last hiccups with the smooth operation of the Trust and we are well on our way to having a lean, mean development machine. Here’s wishing everyone a great August, spring’s just around the corner.
New Members
It is my pleasure to announce that we have received commitments from the following organisations to support the Trust and we look forward to turning their commitments into real benefits to the NGO’s and projects that we have selected as the appropriate beneficiaries. Our new members are:
Gekko’s Backpackers
Fiddlers Creek
Hammerstein Lodge
One World
Paint Chemistry
Apple Tool and Gas
Thebe River Safaris
We’d like to say thank you to our new and existing members for their support, without it very little is possible. So remember to spread the word and tell people about the Trust and the work we are doing. Find out more about the Nomad African Trust by visiting www.nomadafricantrust.co.za
Beneficiaries
Breadline Africa
This month we are featuring the Bulungula Lodge which is a community owned backpackers lodge in the community of Nqileni Village in the Eastern Cape. Nqileni Village must be one of the most remote villages in South Africa. It has no roads, running water, toilets, clinic or electricity. The closest clinic is a 2½ hour walk and the school is a tin shack on a hill with 2 rooms for 200 children. The village is home to 780 people of which 350 are under 18 years of age.
Bulungula Incubator
The Bulungula Incubator is an initiative run by the lodge and aims to support the community through various projects.
With their donors' assistance, Breadline Africa is supporting a project to create a food garden and kitchen attached to the school to feed the children and to be used to train the community.
This project is a wonderful example of how a community can benefit in so many different ways from tourism and the capital that tourists bring.
Other projects include:
• Crisis School Rehabilitation Programme - Rebuilding a new school to improve education.
• Gardening Project And Vegetable Seeding Project - Providing seedlings and advice to members of the community.
• Kids Farming Competition - Annual competition to encourage children to learn more about sustainable agriculture.
• Clean Water Project & Toilets Project - All community members benefit from the Clean Water and Toilets Project. Currently the community use the forest for ablutions. Since the heavy rains wash the sewerage into the rivers and springs and there have been serious dysentery outbreaks.
• Water Tank Project.
• Micro-Enterprises Research Project-The restaurant pictured above is one of these.
Bulungula Lodge is essentially a community owned backpackers lodge which provides a great example of sustainable tourism. It has created jobs for over 35 people in Nqileni Village through working at the lodge directly and through the community owned and run businesses that cater to visitors. Some of these businesses include horse-riding, canoeing, fishing, veggie farming and a restaurant (with delicious pancakes).
Judah Square
It’s been celebration time in Judah square with the Rastafari Earth Day Festival that began on the 18th of July with a weeklong religious gathering that saw devotees coming from all around the country. Knysna Tourism has been promoting the event for the last few years and it has become a highlight in the tourism calendar for the region. The final three days of the ten day festival saw bands from around the country performing for eager visitors as well as community members conducting workshops about health awareness and environmental education. The community members took visitors into the Khayalethu river trail that has been proclaimed a conservation area by government to give a first and perspective into the environmental challenges facing the Garden Route.
Gwexintaba community
The Gwexintaba community is facing a difficult time of the year with stoicism and they are going about easing the challenges faced by many of the HIV positive people in the area by getting going with the planting of health gardens. Under the guiding hand of Louis Fourie , who is an expert in perma-culture projects, they are busy planting high nutrient vegetables that will grow in this inhospitable time of the year, such as spinach and the African potato. In addition to this the community is putting the finishing touches on a community centre, specifically built to cater for volunteers who are starting to display an interest in becoming involved in the development of this vibrant little village. The government has also picked up on the area’s potential and they are in the final planning stages of a tourism facility set on the edge of the Magwa falls canyon (pictured below). It is hoped that this will bring much needed employment into the area.
