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The amazing women of BSG have obtained a new contract to produce school uniforms for schools on the border of South Africa and Zimbabwe. This will provide new and much needed income in SA Rands to boost the project and at the same time providing their ongoing contribution to LCV, its orphaned children and carers.

Villagers pump directly from the river onto the fields near the river…producing their second crop being wheat this year and corn last year.

There are two tank stands erected – one at the river irrigation group and one at the village irrigation group. The pipe connections are complete and water can now reach both sites of irrigation.

A resident AREX (Agricultural Extension) officer now lives at LCV.  He is there courtesy of the government and earns a tiny salary from Government.  The officer guides and trains the community in all aspects of agriculture.  He regularly meets with the community and encourages them to realise the importance of the whole project for their families.  They are used to their old Shangani ways, which does not include agriculture since they were hunters.  The first maize seed purchased in South Africa as it was not available in Zimbabwe at the time, was planted on dry lands instead of at the irrigation because of good rains in December.  However, the rain did not fall enough later in the season and many villages in the project lost their crops due to drought when the plants were half mature.  At LCV the two groups however did harvest some of the maize. The political interference also played a big role in slowing the process down with political figures telling people that they would not own the crops once planted.

After much training from the Arex officer, the villagers realise the value of having water at their disposal and obtained wheat seed from the government programme, miraculously and the two groups prepared their fields. The project group members put a traditional type fence around their field using local trees shrubs.  This is however not permanent of nature and the groups hope to find a kind-hearted donor to help the fence the fields.  The seed was planted in June as a winter crop and they are growing well.  At the river some vegetables are also being grown. 

Challenges have been…. weakness in the fence allowing some cattle to wander into the fields at night and graze the green wheat to the ground. The groups have now assigned duties to each member and are becoming more responsible for the project.  Many of the villagers are illiterate and it takes time for them to learn and understand, but they are progressing and benefit from their hard work.  At the moment LCV is providing all the fuel for pumping until such time as the group members can make an income to contribute towards the purchase of fuel.

Pammie from Hamilton Island Australia writes:

“Thought my friends at RBMC, Darwin, might like to see that our old mattresses arrived safe   and sound and no doubt will be put to very good use at the hospital. Great to also see the bicycles 

which are a Godsend over there!

We will look forward to hearing more feedback as there were thousands of dollars of dressings and medical equipment collected and sent from the Northern Territory, Australia T. Thanks to my hard working counterpart Peter in Sydney.

The container also contained 5 cartons of bras donated from last years Breast Cancer Awareness campaign. Bet there will be a lot of desperately needed laughs in Zim!

The container arrived on Saturday night and was offloaded on Sunday.

From Ezelle and the gang in Chikombedzi:

“ A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HELPED AND DONATED!!

Ian the AFADU container coordinator, especially thank you to you and your team both in Australia, Singapore and South Africa for arranging everything, In the difficult times we are in, everything in that container means more than you know.

Love you all from us all in Zimbabwe.”