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Exciting developments

The classroom is being utilized!

The last couple of weeks have been busy, we collected organic matter and we started teaching the people organic farming in Sezela. We have "revived" some of the old farmers and looked for new ones. Most trainees and members are old ladies because they are more interested in farming than the men. Charibiz will focus on women empowerment. On the picture below you can see how it looks, all fresh and ready to learn! You might ask yourself why the beanies ? Well Holland stole the heat!

What is happening on the practical side of the project?

Yes, it's nice to know how the theory is going but what about some old fashioned mud? Of Course we also kicking of on the practical side. In Malangeni our seedlings are almost ready for planting, they are looking healthy and strong. We grew them into 60% cow dung and 40% press mud (Sugarcane waste product). This will give the plant a better start than planting directly into the soil. We have also started growing 200 Moringa tree seedlings, we hope to see a good result in next few weeks. We managed to get a landscaper to drop of leaves on the gardensite. I see amazing possibilities that makes me exciting because when we control a healthy intake of the soil you control everything. We will start composting soon! More information will follow soon.

In Magabeni we managed to fix the water pump so it is ready to pump water from the small lake because its dry! They vandalized and burned the wooden poles next to the storage container that burned the pipe of the water pump. Thank God the water pump is ok. Jaloesie is very alive in these areas.

Progress in Amandawe

Still my favorite and old friend Jabulani, the field was dead. We managed to revive it a bit, on Friday we are ready to collect some crop from the field to bless the poor in our Full Gospel Church. We are going to plant Moringa tree's there together with beans for intercropping.

We will have to pump the water out of a hole manually and make a hole in the middle of the field so that they have access to water nearby the crops. This should boast the yield a bit. There is still lots of room for improvement, a common problem is that they are not feeding the soil enough, while excessive weed overgrowth has caused the soil to be poor with low nutrient content. Poor soil means poor crop, it will take some time to improve the content of the soil.

Summery -

We are currently having three community groups a total of about 7-8 Hectare of land and about 40 people in total. About less than 5% of the potential of the land is being utilized. Our aim is to increase this with 70% in the next year. 75% productivity would be good. Our aim is expand in the next year with a two extra groups going to 12 Hectare in total. We are still in the development of our cooperation with the Ilove sugar farm. We hope to employ some of our trained farmers to grow beans on the rested land. This could increase our stretch to about 20 Hectares and will have good benefit in food security and a significant economical impact into these people lives. We also aim to have our "Charibiz" brand out and we would like to see how many beans we can pack in the years to come.

May God bless you and keep you safe,

Simon Schaaij jr.

(In Memory of Simon Schaaij Sr. 01-06-2016)


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