Did it again

Well, Happy Valentine's Day. We had a church Valentine's event on Saturday evening at church. I've been told that, although some churches might not have an Easter service or a Good Friday service, every church here will have a Valentine's day event. It was a fun time with food and dancing. I learned an African dance, but I'll have to learn it a lot better before I can do it without lots of laughter.

Yesterday I met with Daran, another missionary here. He's working with HIV patients in the eastern area of the country. His goal is to get a self-sustaining clinic going in one of the villages out there. To do this, he wants to buy a large commercial property that he will then be able to lease out to support the clinic. We talked for quite a while and I think he's got a very good plan going forward.

We were talking about possible ways we can work together, and I explained that our focus at AfricaWorks is more focused on developing the economic capacity of the community. We talked about some of the opportunities that might arise, especially if they have commercial space where we could set up a business/processor. One of the options we're looking at is growing Moringa, an extremely nutritious plant that I think would have very positive impacts in Swaziland.

Some of the speedbumps that we still have to get over include:
1) Daran hasn't been able to put together the money necessary to buy the property. I believe the property costs about $400,000, and he's only raised a fraction of that money. So our (AW) work in the community is purely speculative until his organization can move that forward.

2) We need to do major market research to see if we could sell moringa if we grow it. Although it's worked very well in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, Swazis haven't adopted it into their diet yet. So we'll have to see if we can create a market or export. That will need to be worked out before we decide whether or not to get involved.

Because the area is so far east, we can't really connect them with our abattoir because all the profits will go straight to transportation costs. So I'm just trying to figure out the best way to create opportunities for the people out there. Hopefully more to follow someday.

-Ben