Eating My Words

Well, it seems that after publishing my latest tirade against food aid, someone was listening. This article was just posted in the Mail and Guardian (one of South Africa’s largest newspapers), reporting on the UN’s new initiative to purchase crops from small, low-income farmers in 21 countries to provide food aid in a regional context. Now, I know that some of you will read this article and say, ‘hey, I thought Jason said that most food aid comes from in-kind donations of food, while this article says the WFP purchases 80% of it’s stocks locally?’ Well, I would like to actually see the source of that information, but since I’ve been out of the emergency food aid game now for about 4 years, I won’t argue too profusely. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that WFP is not the only game in town. There are NGO’s that make vast sums of money on the food aid game. The point is, I think that this is a wonderful initiative, just what this sector needs. Hopefully others can learn from the likely successes of this pilot project and shift their focus to more localized solutions.

Walks in the Wood

For the past couple of weeks, the part of me that loves the outdoors has taken over and I’ve spent all of my free afternoons walking in the woods near my cottage. I’m not entirely sure where this urge originated from, but I know that part of it was due to my need for exercise (jogging along the main road was not fun with all the timber trucks, milk tankers and crazy taxi drivers driving at high speeds inches from my face). Also, Nik, the gentleman who owns the farm where I live, is opening a camp for adolescent and teenage children and he needs to find decent hikes to take the campers on, so I offered my free services.  Finally, Nik has two dogs, Sheena (a Boer-bull/Labrador mix) and Tango (a Labrador/Ridgeback mix), who love to go walking in the woods and they torment me endlessly in the afternoons if I don’t take them for their daily walk. So, I walk. It’s quite refreshing to get away from the sounds and pressures of the world, even if only for 45 minutes as I meander along the roads through the rows and rows of perfectly spaced Eucalyptus trees that will soon be cut down and replanted again for the umpteenth time. Some days we will come across a Reed Buck and the dogs will give chase for a bit and other days the dogs will simply take off into the trees, only to return 10 minutes later, loving the freedom. One day I came across a troupe of monkeys in this enormous Eucalyptus along the rivers edge, but mostly it’s just me, the dogs and the silence and beauty of nature. So far, I’ve found about 3-4 viable trails and I hope to map them soon so that Nik can really get himself organized. The only problem I foresee is running out of woods to explore!