I have felt a strong connection to the tiny village of Nqiningana since the moment I arrived back in January 2010. This village is located in the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape province and is the heartland of Xhosa culture. Even the name makes me smile Nin-In-Gana only when you say the first Nin be sure to add a popping click sound at the roof of your mouth!
Gcinisizwe and I have come back to this village to deliver a little more kindness, this time to plant fruit trees and distribute seeds and medical supplies. While we are here we will also host a family ceremony to bring the community together. Quite literally everyone in this village is related to Gcinisizwe in some way. If someone wants to marry they must go to another village to meet someone that they love, if you are a man you bring your wife here to Nqiningana, if you are a woman you go to your new husbands village to live.
First on our agenda is to organize a delivery of fruit and nut bearing trees. A big thank you to Kwa Majuba Greenhouse Boutique in the city of Queenstown for generously delivering these trees to us here in Nqiningana, not an easy task but they were happy to help. Our order consisted of every tree they had in stock such as peach, apple, pear, plum, pecan nuts, almonds, fig and quince. Gcinisizwe and I first met with his grandfather to inform him of our plans who then took us to the village chief to get the final approval. Today the chief, his grandfather and the village elders all met to make a plan for the trees. I was really impressed with how organized and kind everyone was. Nobody was pushing and shoving or saying "Where's Mine", they all worked together to come up with the best plan for the community.
This idea was inspired by my good friend Abdul Karim Abakar. Abdul and I like to talk about his home in Darfur, Sudan, he would tell me about when he was a boy, he and his friends would spend the entire day out in the bush playing. I asked him, didn't you get hungry? He laughed and said no! The bush was FULL of food, mango, avocado, peaches etc all just growing in the wild. Abdul told me that before the genocide (which is still happening as you read this, ie:Rawanda) there was an abundant supply of food, but with the war the rebels have burned all the trees so that there is no longer food for the families who were born here. His pre-war world really inspired me and I realized, Nqiningana and Themablethu have no sources of food. This is why I sit here today and why I have come to plant these trees.
Tomorrow morning a fleet of men will begin digging holes and the work to plant the trees begins. This will take a commitment from the community at the beginning, this is a very dry area, there are no rivers and very little rain so each family has made a pledge to carry water from the well and water the trees once or twice a week until they take hold.
In addition to planting trees I also came to distribute vegetable seeds. A wonderful friend of mine in Nova Scotia made a donation of organic seeds just prior to me leaving Canada. Today I distributed these seeds to the elders and wow they were so excited! A huge huge thank you for the generous donation, you have really made a big impact here in this community. I also had a supply of first aid supplies to give to the community, specific members of the community were chosen by the group to house the materials so that in the future if there is a problem the person who is hurt will go to these houses. The clinic is a hour walk away so this will come in handy for a person who for example just needs some polysporin and a bandage. I also supplied the community with a large quantity of condoms, a very important thing in a country with the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. Previous to this people had to make the 12 hour long journey just to get a condom, most said that the walk was not worth it, but some people would venture off. Now they can get them right here in the community.
Old meets new with this excellent business idea! For just R20 you can hire this man to bring you an entire drum full of water. Not bad conisdering it takes nearly an hour round trip to carry just one 25L bucket! He has rigged up an old cab from a truck to his donkeys!
Sure, I'll go fetch some wood, sounds kind of easy right? Wrong! First you have to trek out into the mountains (hard on the lungs when you are from sea level! Then you have to rip dead bushes out of the ground, bushes that died from the draught. Then you have to bundle the sticks and carry them on your head back to the village. And imagine, this bundle was considered small by the village ladies ha ha, not bad for a first timer though!
The wonderful Gcinisizwe washing clothes by hand. Normally a woman's job Gcinisizwe is happy to pitch a helping hand whenever I need it!
We also distributed a ton of vegetable seeds via the elders some of which you can see here in the photo. Thanks to a very special Nova Scotia donor I was able to supply the community with hand harvested, organic seeds which will grow into healthy foods in the season to come!
This morning was wonderful, together with the village leader and the elders we sat together to form a plan. Yesterday I arranged for 120 fruit and nut bearing trees to arrive in Nqiningana and together we formed a plan in regards to where to plant them and who will help. This is a lovely community, everyone pitched in and everyone was so excited to receive such a wonderful gift! We will plant peach, pear, apple, quince, fig, almonds, and pecans nuts.
Gift idea? Yeah, this is the device that I jimmy'd up in order to take this group photo, can anyone say tripod!!
