Letter to a friend.

Howzit?!

Hope you enjoyed the views of Malolotja on the way back.

Very busy week but mostly  in a good way. I have spent A LOT of time in supermarkets though, which has been remarkably entertaining- like we have so much shopping we've got to have at least two trollies. So you fill one, leave it somewhere in the supermarket and go fill the other one. Then you come back and people have taken loaves of bread and other items out of the first trolley! So you have to count 15 loaves of bread again!

Also had a heads up with a school commitee in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, mental dirt road off that highway we took last week. There's a primary school who want to make money for the school by growing chillies for high quality sale. I listened and understood nothing of a meeting with the head, a chief's representative and other community members. The head is one cool lady, and the meeting agreed that the women we had trained ( in permaculture practices such as mulching, composting, compost teaing, using organic pest control, using bottle drip watering system, growing a live fence) needed to practice growing on their own homesteads before they could produce chillies of a good quality and a quantity that the buyer would travel a few hours to collect.

 The training went well- my team is Little and Large- 2 comedians who tease each other all day long. I'm sure there's something homo-erotic about it! That's Sonny who knows his gardening and has great ideas and Sabelo whose homestead I went to visit and it's amazing. He has a budding food forest of avocado (eeeesh! Too many- we can't eat it. We GIVE it to  others), mangos, paw paw, Fields of ground nuts and maize and sweet potatoes. And we also have Babby Mkonta who is our handyman and does the garden too. He has a cool idea to build a storage shed with traditional Swazi building materials and style. Very exciting.

Then I have been sorting out the menu for a bunch of guys from the Water Zone Mapping team. They are GPSing all the water sources and lines in Hhohho (still can't get over that!) They work hard all day and don't have lunch. We tried to feed them lentils one night and they were not impressed. I trecked back with half a ton of sausages and frozen turkey yesterday to cheer them up!

 Had a great time weeding the kitchen garden this morning- we have quite a lot of food growing but drowning in weeds. I love the way different weeds feel as their roots come out the soil.

So my job is to re-design the site to reflect the needs of workshops we run (in permaculture, food growing, water solutions, pre-school teaching and nutrition) and to be a working model of permaculture principles and ideas. There's some great work going on in Swaziland and South Africa and I plan to visit farms and homesteads where good practice and experiementation are taking place like at Sabelo's place

Swaziland is magical and beautiful. More people should enjoy it! Come here onyour next holiday.

Peace