Quick note on July 25th:
As I was home with my cold but busy creating our blog, something tapped at the window: a Vervet monkey sat on the window ledge looking in and his friend was on top of the house’s carport, near the satellite dish. We really are in Africa.
Our First Weekend Away – South Africa Safari July 22 – 24
We decided on a photo safari for our first big weekend away, especially since we found out near the end of the week that we had Monday, July 24th off to celebrate the birthday of the last King Sobhuza II, the longest reigning monarch in history anywhere in the world. After scurrying for last minute reservations, we drove 3 hours into Kruger National Park in South Africa. We saw elephants, a baboon, herds of Cape buffalo and impala, and a giraffe just on our way to Pretoriuskop where we stayed the first night in a cheery, round, cement hut with a thatched roof. The oldest and the largest rest-camps in Kruger, Pretoriuskop and Skukusa respectively, reminded us of the cabins in U.S. national parks: clean and spartan. Though the compounds each had a restaurant, snack bar, and general store with curios also like American parks, what was a bit different was watching Impala grazing nearby and Vervet monkeys hopping around, scrounging the trash cans for food.
In open trucks converted to have 25 bus seats, rails and a tarp roof, we participated in sunset and sunrise 3-hour guided safaris. We also went on a sunrise ranger-guided walk. Getting up at 4:45 a.m. and sitting in the windy, cold dark both before sunrise and after sunset was challenging but well worth the time spent to see amazing animals in their natural setting, just feet away from us. Over the 3 days, we saw 4 of “The Big Five”: buffalo, elephants, lions, and rhinos. We missed leopards, the most elusive of the Big Five. On the 1st night, we were looking up the road with our safari truck’s spotlights and noted several lions slowly parading ahead. Further back down the road was the alpha Lion of the pride, who was magnificent with a full ruff of hair. We “hung out” with these 7 lions for about 45 minutes and got great pictures. On the next morning’s ride, we saw this same pride with a zebra kill. There were lions guarding the alpha lion as he was eating—we could hear the crunching of bones. After a bit, we watched him drag the zebra carcass further out into the bush to protect his property.
We saw tens of elephants both in groups and alone. In fact on the 2nd night safari one young bull elephant approached our car and 2 others. We quickly drove away but heard later that the other cars spent quite a while extricating themselves from confronting this teen-aged elephant who was cranky because he was kicked out of his herd and now on his own to find a mate (typical adolescent boy?).
Though I started a bad cold on Sunday, nothing would stop me from the last drive and only safari walk to see these animals in the wild. All totaled, we viewed seventeen varieties of animals and six types of birds that we could recognize from our guidebook, including: Baboon, Cape Glossy Starling, Civet (like a small leopard), Duiker (small antelope), Egyptian Geese, Giraffes, Helmeted Guineafowl, Hippos, Hyenas, Impalas, Jackal, Kudu (2nd largest antelope in Kruger), Rabbits, Saddle-billed Storks, White Rhinos, Vervet Monkeys, Warthogs (my personal favorite), and Wildebeests. We were lucky to observe two rare antelope species in the park, Hartebeests and Sables, whose introduction and breeding program at Kruger were not successful. It was unusual and somewhat scary to see 6 hyenas at one time, just knowing the pressure per square inch of their mouths when in attack mode. And just as we passed close by with our spotlights, we startled a Spotted Eagle-Owl who began to open his wings. There were literally hundreds of impala, whom our guides said not only had the markings of the “M” for McDonalds Restaurants on their butts, but also were predators’ fast food of choice. Our drive to, from, and in Kruger was a wonderful experience.
Summary of Rick and Wendy’s First Week July 17 – 21st AT TECHNOSERVE
Rick is working with Mpendulo to learn about the first of the 2 companies that he is helping: a treated pole company which has run out of funding twice. They met the owners/top 2 executives, and hope to put this company on a sustainable track since it could potentially hire up to 200 local Swazis. Rick began to assess the next company to which he is assigned: a proposed bottled water company. We are not sure that there is a strong market need for another company with Coca Cola and Nestle already bottling water regionally, 5 brands or more in the local supermarkets, plus Emafini (our housing compound) brand which bottles water then donates the profits to an orphanage.
Wendy is working with Atiba at Technoserve to create a program to inspire a pool of young, school age (teens and early twenties) Swazis to become entrepreneurs. These youth need to understand the business world and acquire the skills to create a business that could employ themselves and others. During the first 2 days I didn’t feel as though I was actually in Africa, despite seeing all the dark-skinned people while we were at lunch in the mall. People are basically well-dressed in Western style clothing and seem relatively happy. There are lots of cars. I could have been in a small city somewhere in USA’s Deep South.
Atiba and Wendy then met with several groups in rural and urban areas to understand how to leverage business/entrepreneurship classes that are taught to youth in the already-established Swaziland “pre-voc” (pre-vocational or school-to-work) pilot schools. The rural poverty is similar to Mexico’s and every other poor, struggling developing country. Rural stores consist of tin-roofed huts along the road with people walking in to buy food or supplies. “Crafts” could be from any road stand anywhere in Africa. Lots of men and women, young to old, hang out front of the store-huts with no jobs (50% unemployment in Swaziland).
Africa and its failed “big aid” experiments became real for me after visiting 2 of Swaziland’s pilot “pre-voc” schools and meeting a rural village’s high school graduates.
The pre-voc program was supposedly catalyzed by Mozambiquans’ migration to Swaziland during their civil war. These refugees came with nothing, but many started their own tiny businesses and over time began to hire Swazis. So the Swazi government decided their students needed better entrepreneurial classes. They received a big grant from the Africa Development Bank. Farm machinery, farm animals, new labs and classrooms were added to 16 pilot schools across the country. After Atiba’s and my meeting with three students and two teachers at the first school then about six teachers at Swazi National High School (supposedly Swaziland’s most prestigious public high school), it was clear that “pre-voc” programs had significant problems. Not the least of which was 4 large tractors were purchased for training students but not delivered to the high schools and minimal animal husbandry could be taught because animals were generally only female. According to the teachers, the program was “imposed from above” on them and the schools, inadequately marketed to parents and the other teachers, and provided minimal teacher training. Also angering parents and teachers, there is no measurement of impact and the pre-voc students graduate from high school with no additional certification. The pre-voc program originators also mis-set expectations by promising then not delivering financial support for graduated pre-voc students to start businesses.
Atiba and I also met with young men near the rural village of Kantunja, hosted by a native Swazi man who graduated from Colorado State then earned a Masters from Colorado School of Mining. In 2001, the village’s young boys banded together to determine how to create businesses so that they could become employed. As expected of many group efforts, less than 20% of the students did more than 80% of the work on the initial bean-growing project, which achieved E800 profit. But 5 years later the profit still has not been used, no other businesses have been started, and the bean-growing success has not been sustained. Though the youngest was 18 and the oldest over 30, the youth clearly did not understand how to create a workable business plan or viable business. These young men were still living at home with no income source of their own. Our host feels that these young people also lack motivation.
Atiba, Sandra, and I met with the Program Manager and Executive Director of Lulote, a Technoserve partner. We all agreed that pre-voc education is not adequately preparing students for entrepreneurship and unlikely to become the foundation of Technoserve’s future youth program. On Thursday the 5 of us met with the Chief Inspector and 4 of his key staffers in the Ministry of Education who monitor secondary education’s quality across Swaziland. The discussion was frank, and despite some finger-pointing at teachers and poor marketing of the program, the inspectors seemed to agree that the pre-voc program was not successful and unlikely to change without a major overhaul. Additionally distracting to the Inspector’s staff is instituting the new International General Certificate for Secondary Education (IGCSE) initiative based on the British education model. The Ministry looked to us as experts to help solve their problems and we did agree to come back to them with some possible strategies.
