Prize Giving and Prize Sharing – the Kid’s Garden Competition July 29, 2008

Earlier this year we handed out seedlings to over 100 entrants to the second Kid’s Garden Competition. About two and a half months ago, the judging was done by two guests, Sue and Cajun, who run children’s permaculture competitions throughout the Eastern Cape. They had written ahead of their holiday to Bulungula offering permaculture services, and, since the plants were ready, this wasn’t an opportunity we were going to let slip by. I suspect that when we roped them in they had no idea that they were going to have to trudge all over the village for two days, up and down, followed by a snake of children.

Over 70 of the entrants had managed to keep at least some of their gardens growing, despite hungry and determined goats. We judged these gardens taking into account the children’s ages, the quality of the soil they were working with, how many plants had survived (they all got the same amount), the health of the plants, and the state of the whole garden. We waited until after the school holidays to have the prize-giving, which eventually happened last week.

The top six entrant received prizes of Mr Price clothing vouchers which ranged in value from R600 down to R100. On Saturday we piled all the winners of the into the Bulungula shuttle to take them to Mthatha to spend their vouchers. The start of the journey, up through the village, was punctuated with “Bye-bye’s” yelled out the window, “Bye-bye mama!”, “Bye-bye Vuyiseka!”, “Bye-bye!” to anyone within earshot.  The rest of the trip was punctuated by the car-sickness of children not accustomed to being in a car, and the words “Yho!”  (“Wow!”) and, “Intle!” (beautiful) every time we passed a truck or smart car. At one point, one of the boys made a particularly loud “Yho” as a black Mercedes passed by and then said, “I would turn around right now and go home if I could go in that!” But on my asking “Really?” he shook his head violently. The one pair of sunglasses in the group got passed around the shuttle; each one had a chance at wearing them. My sunglasses, and that of a guest, got some wear, too. Approaching Mthatha one of the boys authoritatively announced, “This is the centre of Mthatha”, since it wasn’t, he announced the same thing again a bit later, and then again a bit later, when we actually arrived.

Winners on the way to Mthatha

I am usually quite happy to help other people spend their money, but inside Mr Price it was a slightly more stressful situation than usual, as six children all tried to get their purchases to add up to their respectively won amounts. The top three winners, Pendula, Myberg and Nomfundo kept bringing their choices to me to ask if they had used their money up, and it took quite a lot of adding up sessions before they were eventually there, spot on, on target, so that they each had clothing to the exact value of their vouchers.

The fifth and the sixth prize winners did a deal amongst themselves, which I would never have expected. Mpho came sixth, and only had R100 to spend, but he was determined to buy school shoes. The only suitable black shoes in the shop cost R150, so Sikhathele, who came fifth and won a R200 voucher agreed to give Mpho R50 of his voucher. This meant that they each had R150 to spend. At the tills, though, we realised that the maths had gone a little wrong (maths has never been a strong point in the village, hence the school project). Sikhathele had chosen items worth R170. I wasn’t quite sure how to handle this situation, since it was Sikhatele’s generosity that meant he couldn’t buy the items for himself that he had chosen.  It was Nomfundo, a very shy twelve year old (and the only girl amongst the winners) who worked out the solution. She had just paid for her goods, and found herself R20 up due to one of her items being on sale. She quietly tapped me and whispered, “They can have my R20, I don’t need another t-shirt”.  In the end, then, two of the children each gave up some of their prize money so that Sizwe could get the school shoes he needed. This was done as a perfectly logical solution, and without any resentment. The spirit of the village has never been as patently obvious as it was to me as it was on Saturday, in Mthatha.

Anna Versfeld

Craig keeps on gardening April 7, 2008

Visiting one household the other day I saw the 4 children’s gardens next to each other and a general wander around the village shows that there are lots of kid’s gardens looking good. This is a satisfying sign that the Kid’s Gardening Competition is working just as it should. Last years winner, Myberg, is now staking his tomatoes, which is a first in the competition’s history and is definitely going to give him an edge.
 

My work, which resumed in January this year, is going well. The nursery is looking good and the garden is poised to become massively productive. It was standing still and water-logged when I arrived, and needed some serious attention. The lack of drainage was a huge stumbling block this summer, which effectively drowned a 100 square meter plot of vegetables. We have now raised, drained and planted two of the four plots.

 

We are starting to see a picture of abundance, the tomatoes are staked and fruiting, there are baby marrows and we are going to harvest some lettuce today, so we are already seeing a financial result. Butternuts are forming – and being stung by wasps just as quickly! There is coriander and rocket under way. The potatoes are not sprouting well yet, but the sweet potatoes are looking amazing. The cucumbers are looking good, but we’ve yet to see flowers. The onions are already forming white bulbs and the beetroot are swelling. We’ve been making 20 litre buckets of chilli tea to pour onto the plants to keep the bugs away and the cauliflowers, which are usually instantly munched, are still there, which I take as a good sign. Nothembile is happy with her garden

 

The training sessions are almost complete, except for two follow up weeks in a few months time. The goal of introducing visual planting guides have been introduced and are being followed, and it seems our production levels are up nicely. This last week will be spent planting the third bed. Preparing this for planting has involved massive earth works, moving soil from a drainage ditch onto the plot to raise it and further our drainage cause. There are many people on site at the moment helping the work along. Right now I am on my way to fetch some string, so that we can perfect the gradient of the ditch.

 

Kid’s Garden Competition – An Event in the Village February 23, 2008

Garden projects on the go again February 8, 2008

Craig arrived back in the village mid January – thanks to funding from Old Mutual he will be able to finish work he started on the garden and nursery projects back in 2006.

Here is his update: 

My immediate focus has been on designing two charts as planting guides for the mamas to enhance and coordinate their monthly plantings. There was a problem – not enough variety was being planted and they were losing sales. Both Noayini and Notembile, who run the nursery and kitchen garden, are excellent gardeners, but they are illiterate, so it was imperative that this guide be visual and easy to follow.  

The charts represent models of the garden and the nursery. They are made up of pictures that show the seedlings or seeds to be planted in each row and the numbers of each type to be planted per hole of the drip irrigation system. It is an easy to follow, unambiguous, visual guide.   

I introduced the charts to the ladies keeping fingers crossed that they would be well received and easily understood. Having worked in the village for some time I’ve had quite some experience with miscommunication. They seem, however, to have been quickly understood and well received. Both Noayini and Notembile are now planting on schedule. For the next few months I’ll be helping the ladies get into a rhythm of planting at the beginning of every month – think clockwork – and assisting them to follow the guides perfectly. 

Otherwise, the exciting news is that the Kid’s Gardening Competition is starting this Saturday! If you are in the area I do suggest you come down to the village – this is an awesome thing to witness – a hundred or more village kids receiving their allotted seedlings and rushing off to plant them that they can be the best gardeners. This one has been extended that the maximum age is now 16 years old. The prizes are again clothing vouchers – Dave’s brilliant idea – which links gardening with being cool in the popular imagination.  Big thanks to Liz Barrett and Aleeta Drummond for the funds which have enabled this competition to happen again. 

In the coming weeks I will be sorting out the drainage in the garden, but more on that in the next update.

The Kids’ Farming Competition August 8, 2007

Liz Barrett from Canada heard about Bulungula and its projects and wanted to help out by donating money. She had about $500 to give and asked what we would do with it.

I had an idea that had been brewing for quite a while and I suggested that she fund it… She agreed and so began the Kids Farming Competition… a brilliant little project.

The idea with this project was fairly straight forward:
1. Use half the money to buy 7000 vegetable seedlings from the community-owned seedling nursery we started (read about it elsewhere on this blog).
2. Give each kid under 13 in the village around 70 seedlings to plant and nurture.
3. Give the top 3 kid farmers wicked prizes bought with the other half of the money.

The thinking around this project was that in our community (and most others in the rural areas), farming is perceived as uncool and something done only by backward old people. Unfortunately, the fact that we don’t have a functioning school means that many of these children will have few formal employment opportunities when they’re older. Thus farming will be one of the most viable ways that they can earn an income. Given the chronic malnutrition in the area, it is also crucial to get as many nutritious veggies into the village asap – many of the young children are so severely malnourished by the time they turn two that their brains are permanently stunted.

By running this competition it was hoped that the kids would be lured by the promise of great prizes to try farming and that some would find that they enjoyed it and would keep on farming. Whether kids got addicted to farming or not, at the very least there would be around 7,000 fresh veggies injected into the village thus improving the nutrition situation without the bad, dependency/charity vibes that go along with food handouts.

So the money arrived in December 2006  – THANKS LIZ!  – and it was all systems go.

Craigo, our resident organic farming volunteer got to work. He and No-Ayin (the owner of the community nursery and Craigo’s village mom) got planting the seeds in the seed beds. By this stage they had the whole seedling thing down so within a few short weeks there were thousands of seedlings ready to distribute.

 

Nursery with seedlings growing

Craigo and our community trustees called all the kids together and with the help of some Bulungula guests they dished out over 7,000 seedlings to approximately 100 children with some simple advice on how to care for them.

 

Craigo handing out the seedlings

 

Mpho watering his freshly planted seedlings

There was lots of excitement and plenty confusion as something like this had never been done before… Many of the kids were skeptical about the idea but went along with it as they had nothing to lose.

Time passed and after 3 months it came to judging time. Everything was set to go when disaster struck: Craigo got Hep A and was man down. (Don’t worry girls, that’s the Hep you get from dodgy food not dodgy sex He had been living in a mud hut at NoAyin’s house for about 5 months and picked up a germ… No toilets in our village!)

Anyway, this complicated matters greatly as I (Dave) have no experience at all when it comes to farming… I called Tim Wigley, an expert organic farmer, and came up with some judging criteria. These were:
1. The total number of seedlings that survived out of the initial 70 they were given,
2. The number of different types of veggies that survived (each kid was given four types of veggies: beetroot, spinach, tomatoes and cabbages),
3. The health/condition of each of the veggie types,
4.  The general condition of the veggie garden (mulching, weeds, etc).

So off I went to visit all the gardens scattered throughout all corners of the    village. The first Saturday I visited the Dingata side of the village with Gary and Candy: archaeologists from Canada who found some ancient Strandloper pottery on our big dune while they were here.

I visited some beautiful gardens that day and stopped in to chat with old Tholesilo the 80 year-old legend of our village.

The next Saturday I headed off with Anne and Roger to the Bulungula side of the village where there some even more beautiful gardens. There were also quite a few tiny little gardens belonging to tiny little six and seven year-olds: so cute!!

 

Our youngest farmer!

After two days of walking the length and breadth of the village all the gardens had been visited and we were ready for prize giving.

The first prize was R300 ($40) of clothing vouchers and a giant roll of fencing mesh as well as R100 of seedlings. The idea with the clothing was that it is (unfortunately) the symbol of status in this part of the world… So having the winners strut their stuff in the latest fashion will hopefully do wonders in promoting the coolness of farming.

2nd prize was R200 in clothing plus R50 in seedlings and 3rd prize was R100 in clothing and R25 in seedlings. 

We made simple laminated certificates for each child that finished the competition with a photo of them in their garden. The non-winners also each got a toothbrush donated by Eshaam Abdurahman (Rejane’s cousin – he’s a dentist… THANKS ESHAAM!).

An example of the  certificate .

So prize giving day came round on the 1st of July and there was much anticipation and excitement. We did the usual tension building finale with the winners announced right at the end.

The winner was Mayibeki Maleyile (11 years) who has a beautiful garden that was well mulched and in excellent condition. He bought some ultra cool clothes and has subsequently been making a small fortune selling veggies to the lodge restaurant… His mother is SO proud! He had never got a certificate for anything before.

 

The winner: Mayibeki

2nd was Zintle Mswane (11 years) with another beautiful garden  – her tomato plants were huge!

 

2nd place: Zintle

3rd was Nothembiso Bayinete (14 years) who had some great cabbages and climbed the steepest hill ever with 20L buckets of water on her head in order to water her veggies.

 

3rd place: Nothembiso

 

Kids with certificates

The winners in their new clothes

Lessons learnt: this competition exceeded expectations in every way. Next time we run it, we must build in a small budget for some of the local village expert farmers to be paid to do the judging. Also we should add more diversity of veggie-types e.g. Carrots, beans and onions. I definitely think this kind of project has huge replicability potential throughout our region, especially if paired with the building of a seedling nursery… So if enthusiastic development or government types are reading this: let’s do 3 competitions a year in every village in the Transkei!

Thank you to Craigo for his hard work with this competition and especially to Liz for her generous donation.

We’ll be doing another competition soon and we may have a funder for it already!