“Hawu – ukudla okungaka!”, or a wide-eyed “So much food!” was the reaction of one tree-preneur as she approached the recent KwaJobe tree store early in April. And indeed, this store was the biggest the KwaJobe community has seen to date, with community members trading up to R90 000 worth in trees. It is a place where money does actually grow on trees: it is not the amount of cash in your pocket that will determine how much you can buy, but the amount of trees you’ve grown.
The tree stores are part of the Indigenous Trees For Life (ITFL) project of the Wildlands Conservation Trust, which encourage disadvantaged communities to recognize the value of indigenous trees. People part of the project –called tree-preneurs – collect indigenous tree seeds, nurture them into young trees and then trades the trees back to the trust for goods available once every few months in the tree stores. Goods available are foodstuffs like rice, maize and beans, but also other necessities like soap, shampoo and school uniforms. Some order JoJo water tanks through the project so they can water vegetable gardens at home and the children order shiny yellow bicycles, 100 trees a piece, so they can whiz to school, friends and work on the dusty tracks of their rural community.
Tree-preneurs started arriving as early as 7:30am at the KwaJobe tree store on April 7th, with wheelbarrows – also bought with trees – in tow to carry away their shopping. Each tree-preneur is given a grocery list of the stock available and a credit slip to indicate the amount of trees they have traded to the Trust, and then has the opportunity to browse through the store with a facilitator who helps calculate the tree value of the items they choose.
The tree-preneurs shop wisely. While there are nice clothes and shoes for sale donated by Foschini and Mr Price, they head for the food first: maize, sugar beans, rice and tinned fish.
If there is tree credit left after that, they might pick out a nice pair of shoes or a colourful top. Gogos put a guiding hand on the back of young children to make sure they also buy school necessities like a uniform or a new pair of school shoes. For most, the food is what makes the difference. Tree-preneur Mrs Busi Mthethwa, who joined the project two years ago, laughs with joy at the variety of soups on offer. “I am so happy, because I will be eating stew tonight!” she says.
The KwaJobe community is one of the first communities to have been involved with ITFL, and Program Manager Charmaine Veldsman says setting up tree stores is about addressing the most basic needs of the community.
‘At the end of the day I stood at the last checkpoint helping a woman count her goods, and as she walked off with her arms full of food, she turned around and said to us, in Zulu: ‘Tonight I won’t be hungry.’ To me, that is what makes this project so special – we are literally helping people survive.’
The next tree store at KwaJobe, run by Project Manager Graeme Farley, is scheduled for the end of May 2009.
Top left: A community nursery where the trees are kept once they have been collected from the tree-preneurs’ homesteads. The tree-preneurs are given credit notes when their trees are collected which they bring to the tree stores to ‘buy’ the goods they need.
Centre: Mrs Busi Mthembu with her wheelbarrow of goods traded at the Tree Store.
WILDTRUST (registered as the Wildlands Conservation Trust - IT No: 4329/1991/PMB)