The Vergenoeg Project


Background
The San or Kalahari Bushmen are one of the oldest cultural group in the world. They have lived for 20,000 years with an incredibly small ecological footprint that is the very definition of sustainable and culture that is founded on equality and sharing.  In the last 200 years their survival has been threatened by new landownership laws and cattle farming, which limited access of the San to their traditional hunting grounds and consequently limited their ability to live their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle. 

In Vergenoeg, Namibia (which incidentally means Far Enough in Afrikaans) 300 San have been settled onto 3 acres.  This amount of land is not enough for them to be able to live traditionally and maintain a sufficient caloric intake, this had come to mean a dependancy on deliveries of maize meal and diesel to pump water from bore holes.

Further stress on the food supply comes from a large number of orphans (many due to AIDS) from other communities that have been brought to the village to ensure that they have the opportunity to attend school.

Birth of a Project
Seven years ago a group of international volunteers started to help the village by supplementing their food supply by buying maize meal. We quickly understood that it was simply a band-aid to the problem and actively sought a sustainable solution to the food shortage.  

After much research and time we found that Permaculture training and infastructure would be a truly sustainable solution.

Mission and Objectives
Our mission is to turn problems into solutions.  We're not just turning problems into temporary non-problems, which can become bigger problems later.  We do not use a bandAID approach nor do we claim to be the North Americans saving the Bushmen.  The methods we use to collaborate with the village and to design for sustainability are practiced all over the world.  Just as our solutions promote independence in Vergenoeg, they can similarly support the over-resourced world become less dependent on imports and diesel.

The aim of the Vergenoeg Project is to promote food security.  Due to the whole-system thinking that is the basis of Permaculture, the food security project is also
  1. a water security project (through catchment), 
  2. a carbon capture project (planting trees and no tilling of soil), 
  3. a soil building project (mulching, recycling of nutrients and planting nitrogen-fixing trees), 
  4. a health project (growing varied diet of nutritional foods and medicinal plants), 
  5. a sanitation project (grey water systems and composting of manures), 
  6. a peace building project (when needs are met over the long term without exploiting others or the environment - peace tends to follow), and 
  7. a vocational education project (Ferro cement, permaculture).