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News
January 22, 2004 posting, by Jim
Since the ANC rally on January 11, things have really started to pick up. Activities since then:
I had agreed to facilitate the development of a gender policy at Reichenau. There are nine young African trainers on staff, and they train young people from eight areas, including Ndawana, in AIDS education, environmental issues, health, life skills, etc. Along with the gender policy, they needed to work on team relationships. We spent the day in what turned out to be a very productive circle meeting. Among other things, it enabled me to get to know the people, and that will be very important in our work here. We also closed with a Zulu song, sung in four parts and incredibly beautiful. African music is wonderful, and it begins to seem that there are no bad voices here.
Two days later Chris and I spent lunch and the afternoon at Reichenau meeting with Marilyn, Sibongile and Zanele. We concentrated on learning from each other the mandate of the two organizations, Edzimkulu and the Women‚s Leadership Training Program (WLTP), and discussing how we can work together in a synergistic way. That, in turn, led to an informal alliance between the two organizations. The first project will be to train 200 women from the eight areas in entrepreneurial skills. WLTP has a grant, Chris and I will develop and teach the materials for the first of 8 cohorts, and simultaneously we will train trainers to teach the materials for the succeeding cohorts. The quid pro quo is that we negotiated for 40 of the women to be from Ndawana.
We know that in Africa people don‚t seem to plan well. In this case, the first cohort has been selected and will appear at Reichenau on February 3rd, and until we agreed to teach this cohort, they had little idea of the materials required and no instructors for that cohort.
This week we met with Marilyn, (another) S‚bongile, a teacher, and a woman, Snoeks, about the literacy program Snoeks developed and manages across KwaZulu-Natal. We agreed that literacy is one of our mandates and that we will work together in ways similar to those with WLTP. This includes upgrading the almost non-existent library at Ndawana and teaching ESL. We are very impressed with Snoeks and see lots of potential for cooperation.
Yesterday, we met with the Chief and a few of his advisors in Ndawana. Zanele translated. They seem delighted to have us here, and we shared a lot of information and understanding. They have no electricity, no telephones, no medical care, no running water except what they can pipe out of the hills when it rains, a poor road to their governmental administrative centre 125 km. away, and no vehicles. When a pregnant woman is ready to deliver, someone has to ride a horse a long distance to get a doctor. We talked about the entrepreneurial training at Reichenau, which requires that the women come with another skill. There are a few women who sew, some are raising chickens for sale, and some are attempting gardening. None of the projects is going well, and we will help with those basic skills, and teach others, to prepare the women for the entrepreneurial training.
The Chief is a soft-spoken man who seems very ready to work with us. We left to smiles, hearty handshakes and some hugs. We agreed that we will talk with the chief if we encounter difficulties in the village, and that he will talk with us if anyone is unhappy with what we are doing. One man, with tears in his eyes, told us that “we‚re not f**king animals,” which is the way they were treated under apartheid.
Yesterday we also met with a local accountant, Mike, who agreed for his firm to be our auditor for Edzimkulu (Ltd.), the Section 21 Company. He informed and advised us about some of our concerns with reporting and recording issues for the company.
At this point we feel well and truly on our way, and look forward to volunteers arriving to carry on with all of this.
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