A budding collaboration: Eloolo Permaculture to support Sonder Water Community (by Reinhold Mangundu)
22 July 2020
In the last two weeks, with the donations
of seedlings from compassionate people, we managed to successfully set up two
home-based gardens at Sonder Water. I planted a number of papaya fruit and a
variety of vegetable seedlings in the garden of Meme Erna (Mother hen of the
community) and that of Alwyn (The unemployed welding champion). They had all established small garden patches and
together with some friends, we excitingly dug them up, added nutrient-rich sand
from a small river behind their community, and all sort of good organic content
we scavenged from the surroundings. The vegetables planted are winter veggies,
so they should grow pretty well. They are all looking lovely, as they grow
through the thick mulch from the dry grass we added.
Last Saturday morning, I had a site visit
to Sonder Water with my good friend Donavon. He is a specialist in agro-ecological
practices and has established some amazing permaculture-based gardens at
schools and in poor communities as part of their Eloolo Permaculture
Initiative. Their initiative endeavours to improve and enhance socio-ecological
systems guided by their ethics, which are: care for the people, care for earth
and fair share. These have guided them for the past years to passionately work
on projects addressing urban food security, community education and
sustainability.
The reason for the visit was to introduce
him to Sonder Water, to meet the residents and see what we have already
started. This allowed him to also find the areas where they can be of support,
particularly in regards to the community-based gardens as a source of
livelihoods.
“Reinhold, this is a great community. It
is small and we can do a lot here to support you.’’
In light of Donavan’s visit to Sonder Water
and our conversation with some of the residents, Eloolo Permaculture has
offered to give fruit trees to the residents. They suggested the possibility of
training workshops, where residents will be taught the basics of gardening and the
art of growing fruit trees. The idea is to get their program to buy these fruit
trees from the residents as a way of initiating small-scale employment
opportunities.
What initially was a quick site visit, turned
into an envisioning of a spectrum of amazing possibilities that could be
explored. Eloolo envisions themselves enhancing and supporting different skills
through a kind of small working hub at Sonder Water. I have liaised with the
Cooperate Services Department of Trans Namib, to get an old shipping container donated
to the community. The container is to be transformed and used as a working hub,
where skilled people like Alwyn could be making pallet furniture and/or welding
rocket stoves or make solar ovens. These are all contingent on the success of
the gardens and the availability of resources and time, both from the For Progress
Namibia Project Team and the Eloolo Permaculture Initiative.
Is it not amazing that in the current
turmoil, we start seeing the true power of small compassionate acts built on
collaboration? Similar to acupuncture, they act as strong powerful points affecting
change in the entire system, incrementally of course. They can promote positive
change beyond the existing bureaucratic grip hindering progress in our
government institutions. I say this, acknowledging that it would have been slow
or almost impossible to get the gardens
established through the Katutura-East Constituency (e.g. trying to access
capital projects funding). It is thus warming to see the impact of collaboration
and compassionate leadership at grassroots.